Winning respect, nor claiming what he won,
But tempering greatness, like an evening sun
Whose light the eye can tranquilly admire,
Glorious but mild, all softness yet all fire!-
Whatever hue my recollections take,
Even the regret, the very pain they wake
Is dear and exquisite !—but oh! no more-
Lady! adieu-my heart has linger'd o'er

These vanish'd times, till all that round me lies, Stream, banks, and bowers, have faded on my eyes!

IMPROMPTU,

AFTER A VISIT TO MRS.

OF MONTREAL.

'Twas but for a moment-and yet in that time
She crowded the impressions of many an hour:
Her eye had a glow, like the sun of her clime,
Which waked every feeling at once into flower!

Oh! could we have stolen but one rapturous day,
To renew such impressions again and again,
The things we could look, and imagine, and say,
Would be worth all the life we had wasted till

then!

What we had not the leisure or language to speak, We should find some more exquisite mode of

revealing,

And, between us, should feel just as much in a week,

As others would take a millennium in feeling!

WRITTEN

ON PASSING DEADMAN'S ISLAND,*

IN THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,

Late in the Evening, September, 1804.

SEE you, beneath yon cloud so dark,
Fast gliding along, a gloomy bark ?

This is one of the Magdalen Islands, and, singularly enough, is the property of Sir Isaac Coffin. The above lines were suggested by a superstition very common among sailors, who call this ghost-ship, I think, "the flying Dutchman."

We were thirteen days on our passage from Quebec to Halifax, and I had been so spoiled by the very splendid hospitality with which my friends of the Phaeton and Boston had treated me, that I was but ill prepared to encounter the miseries of a Canadian ship. The weather however was pleasant, and the scenery along the river delightful. Our passage through the Gut of Canso, with a bright sky and a fair wind, was particularly striking and romantic.

Her sails are full, though the wind is still, And there blows not a breath her sails to fill!

Oh! what doth that vessel of darkness bear?
The silent calm of the grave is there,

Save now and again a death-knell rung,
And the flap of the sails with night-fog hung!

There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador;

Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost
Full many a mariner's bones are toss'd!

Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim blue fire that lights her deck
Doth play on as pale and livid a crew,
As ever yet drank the church-yard dew!

To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast,
To Deadman's Isle she speeds her fast;

By skeleton shapes her sails are furl❜d,

And the hand that steers is not of this world!

Oh! hurry thee on- -oh! hurry thee on,
Thou terrible bark! ere the night be gone,
Nor let morning look on so foul a sight
As would blanch for ever her rosy light!

TO THE BOSTON FRIGATE,*

ON LEAVING HALIFAX FOR ENGLAND, OCTOBER, 1804.

ΝΟΣΤΟΥ ΠΡΟΦΑΣΙΣ ΓΛΥΚΕΡΟΥ.—PINDAR. Pyth. 4.

WITH triumph this morning, oh! Boston! I hail The stir of thy deck and the spread of thy sail, For they tell me I soon shall be wafted, in thee, To the flourishing isle of the brave and the free, And that chill Nova-Scotia's unpromising strand † Is the last I shall tread of American land.

* Commanded by Captain J. E. Douglas, with whom I returned to England, and to whom I am indebted for many, many kindnesses. In truth, I should but offend the delicacy of my friend Douglas, and, at the same time, do injustice to my own feelings of gratitude, did I attempt to say how much I owe to him.

Sir John Wentworth, the Governor of Nova-Scotia, very kindly allowed me to accompany him on his visit to the College which they have lately established at Windsor, about forty miles from Halifax, and I was indeed most pleasantly surprised by the beauty and fertility of the country which opened upon us after the bleak and rocky wilderness by which Halifax is surrounded. I was told that, in travelling onwards, we should find the soil and the scenery improve, and it gave me much pleasure to know that the worthy Governor has by no means such an inamabile regnum" was, at first sight, inclined to believe.

as I

Well-peace to the land! may the people, at

length,

Know that freedom is bliss, but that honour is

strength;

That though man have the wings of the fetterless

wind,

Of the wantonest air that the north can unbind, Yet if health do not sweeten the blast with her

bloom,

Nor virtue's aroma its pathway perfume,

Unblest is the freedom and dreary the flight,
That but wanders to ruin and wantons to blight!

Farewell to the few I have left with regret,
May they sometimes recal, what I cannot forget,
That communion of heart and that parley of soul,
Which has lengthen'd our nights and illumined
our bowl,

When they've ask'd me the manners, the mind, or the mien

Of some bard I had known or some chief I had

seen,