STANZAS WRITTEN IN A HIGHLAND GLEN. BY JOHN WILSON, ESQ. To whom belongs this valley fair, Calm, as the infant at the breast, Save a still sound that speaks of rest, The heavens appear to love this vale; There, clouds with scarce-seen motion sail By that blue arch this beauteous earth O! that this lovely vale were mine! There would unto my soul be given, From presence of that gracious heaven, A piety sublime; And thoughts would come of mystic mood, To make in this deep solitude Eternity of time! And did I ask to whom belonged This vale?—I feel that I have wronged Nature's most gracious soul! She spreads her glories o'er the earth, Yea! long as nature's humblest child Earth's fairest scenes are all his own, Is built amid the skies! CELANO. A BLUE Italian sky,—yet scarce more blue Beneath whose shade might the young painter lean, Dark Hannibal once rested. Who could dream That this calm lake was crimson once with blood? That these green myrtles waved, o'er the death-wounds Of men in their last agony? Oh, War! How soon thy red fiends can lay desolate The holy and the beautiful! Literary Gazette. L. E. L. THE FLOWER OF MALHAMDALE. IF, on some bright and breezless eve, A sigh that seems allied to grief, Nor shed the tear, nor pour the wail, When death has blighted to its root The sweetest flower of Malhamdale! Her form was like the fair sun-stream Would vanish from our glens so soon! The placid depth of that dark eye, To think, when gazing on that vale, I may not tell what dreams were mine, Of Love, and Hope, and Joy, is pale, BALLAD. BY MRS. CORNWELL BARON WILSON. YES! Once I own I loved thee, With purest flame, with purest flame; Let stoics blame, let stoics blame; When Hope's soft voice was singing, With bosoms light, from sorrow free, Nor did I dream that dark regret Could ever rise at thoughts of THEE! "Twas in youth's summer season, When hearts were gay, when hearts were gay; Before the wand of reason Chased hope away, chased hope away; That first this bosom felt love's power, And worshipped at his fairy shrine; Nor ever thought that luckless hour That sunny time passed over, And life grew dark, and life grew dark; And fate soon left thy lover, A stranded bark, a stranded bark; Of all his early glories reft, On life's rude ocean dark and dim, With not one friendly harbour left, Or welcome port to shelter him! Still in that hour of sorrow, When fortune frowned, when fortune frowned; His heart one hope could borrow, To look around, to look around; That tracked the wanderer's weary way! Yet this last hope was blighted, So fate decreed, so fate decreed; For THOU, like others, slighted The bruised reed, the bruised reed; Yes! thou wert like that faithless thing, The blue-winged bird of distant isles, That only spreads its painted wing, And breathes its song when Phoebus smiles! Yes! once I own I loved thee, A BYRONIAN GEM. BETWEEN two worlds life hovers like a star, "Twixt night and morn upon the horizon's verge, How little do we know that which we are! How less what we may be! The eternal surge Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar Our bubbles; as the old burst, new emerge, Lashed from the foam of ages; while the graves Of empires heave but like some mightier waves! |