[From The Lay of the Last Minstrel.]
Melrose ABBEY BY MOON-
LIGHT.

IF thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,

Go visit it by the pale moonlight; For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray. When the broken arches are black in night,

And each shafted oriel glimmers white;

When the cold light's uncertain shower

Streams on the ruined central tower; When buttress and buttress, alternately,

Seem framed of ebon and ivory;
When silver edges the imagery,
And the scrolls that teach thee to
live and die;

When distant Tweed is heard to rave,
And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead

man's grave, Then go but go alone the while Then view St. David's ruined pile; And, home returning, soothly swear, Was never scene so sad and fair!

Whose wishes, soon as granted fly;

It liveth not in fierce desire.

With dead desire it doth not die; It is the secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart, and mind to mind,

In body and in soul can bind.

[From The Lay of the Last Minsċrel.] BREATHES THERE THE MAN.

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, [claim; Boundless his wealth as wish can Despite those titles, power and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

scene,

But present still, though now unseen!

When brightly shines the prosperous day,

Be thoughts of Thee a cloudy screen
To temper the deceitful ray.
And, oh, when stoops on Judah's
path

In shade and storm the frequent night,

REBECCA'S HYMN.

WHEN Israel, of the Lord beloved, Out from the land of bondage came, Her fathers' God before her moved,

An awful guide in smoke and flame. By day, along the astonished lands

The cloudy pillar glided slow; By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands Returned the fiery column's glow.

There rose the choral hymn of praise, And trump and timbrel answered keen,

And Zion's daughters poured their lays, [tween. With priest's and warrior's voice beNo portents now our foes amaze, Forsaken Israel wanders lone; Our fathers would not know Thy ways,

And Thou hast left them to their

own.

wrath,

I have strained the spider's thread 'Gainst the promise of a maid; I have weighed a grain of sand 'Gainst her plight of heart and hand; I told my true love of the token How her faith proved light and her word was broken;

Again her word and truth she plight, And I believed them again ere night.

WANDERING WILLIE.

ALL joy was bereft me the day that you left me,

And climbed the tall vessel to sail yon high sea; [it, O weary betide it! I wandered beside And banned it for parting my Willie and me.

Far o'er the wave hast thou followed thy fortune,

and of Spain;

Ae kiss of welcome's worth twenty at

parting,

Now I hae gotten my Willie again.

When the sky it was mirk, and the winds they were wailing,

I sat on the beach wi' the tear in
my ee,

And thought of the bark where my
Willie was sailing,
And wished that the tempest could

a' blaw on me.

have wandered,

Enough, thy leal heart has been constant to me.

THE SUN UPON THE WEIRDLAW HILL.

THE sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill,

The western wind is hush and still, In Ettrick's vale is sinking sweet;

The lake lies sleeping at my feet. Yet not the landscape to mine eye Bears those bright hues that once Though evening, with her richest dye, it bore; Flames o'er the hills of Ettrick's shore.

With listless look along thy plain,

I see Tweed's silver current glide, And coldly mark the holy fane

Of Melrose rise in ruined pride. The quiet lake, the balmy air,

The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree,

Are they still such as once they were? Or is the dreary change in me?

Alas, the warped and broken board,

How can it bear the painter's dye! The harp of strained and tuneless chord,

How to the minstrel's skill reply! To aching eyes each landscape lowers, To feverish pulse each gale blows chill;

And Araby's or Eden's bowers

Were barren as his moorland hill.

THE VIOLET.

THE violet in her greenwood bower, Where birchen boughs with hazels mingle,

May boast itself the fairest flower

In glen, or copse, or forest dingle.

Though fair her gems of azure hue, Beneath the dewdrop's weight reclining;

I've seen an eye of lovelier hue,

More sweet through watery lustre shining.

The summer sun that dew shall dry, Ere yet the day be past its morrow;

Nor longer in my false love's eye Remained the tear of parting sor

row.

HELVELLYN.

I CLIMBED the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,

Lakes and mountains beneath me gleamed misty and wide; All was still, save by fits, when the eagle was yelling,

And starting around me the echoes
replied.

On the right, Striden-edge round the
Red-tarn was bending,
And Catchedicam its left verge was
defending,

One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending,

When I marked the sad spot where the wanderer had died.

Dark green was the spot 'mid the brown mountain-heather,

Where the pilgrim of nature lay

stretched in decay,

Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to weather,

Till the mountain winds wasted the tenantless clay.

Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended,

For, faithful in death, his mute favorite attended,

The much-loved remains of her master defended,

And chased the hill-fox and the raven away.

How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber?

When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou start ? How many long days and long weeks didst thou number,

Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart?

And, oh! was it meet, that - no requiem read o'er him No mother to weep, and no friend to deplore him,

And thou, little guardian, alone stretched before himUnhonored the pilgrim from life should depart?

When a prince to the fate of the peasant has yielded,

The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted hall;

With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded,

And pages stand mute by the canopied pall:

Through the courts, at deep midnight, the torches are gleaming; In the proudly - arched chapel the banners are beaming, Far adown the long aisles sacred music is streaming, Lamenting a chief of the people should fall.

But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature,

To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb,

Now, at the fount their life-long thirst are quenching,

Whence rise the gentle showers, the nightly dew.

They drink the quickening streams through every fibre,

Until with hidden life each seed shall swell;

Then come the winds of God, his word fulfilling,

And bear them back, where He shall please, to dwell.

Thus live meek spirits, duly schooled to duty,

The whirlwind storm may sweep them from their place;

sirocco

driven Straight to their God, the fountain of all grace?

And when, at length, the final trial cometh,

Though hurled to unknown worlds, they shall not die;

Borne not by winds of wrath, but God's own angels,

They feed upon His love and dweil beneath His eye.

Till by the angel of the resurrection, One awful blast through heaven and earth be blown;

floating,

That in their desert homes no mois

ture knew,

sunder,

That all God's ways are true and just shall own!