THE SUV UPON THE WIERD LAW-HILL.

THE sun upon the Wierdlaw-hill,
In Ettrick's vale, is sinking sweet,
The westland wind is hush and still,

The lake lies sleeping at my feet.

Yet not the landscape to mine eye

Bears those bright hues that once it bore;

Though evening, with her richest dye,

Flames o'er the hills of Ettrick's shore.

With listless look along the plain,

I see Tweed's silver current glide,

And coldly mark the holy fane

Of Melrose rise in ruin'd 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 warp'd and broken board,

How can it bear the painter's dye!
The harp of strain'd 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 this moorland hill.

MY VATIVE LAND.

BREATHES there a 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 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!

JAMES HOGG.

1773-1835.

JAMES HOGG was born in a sphere perhaps still more remote than that of Burns from the possibility of attaining the dignity of a popular and national poet. Born the descendant of an ancestry of shepherds in the wilds of Ettrick, his seventh year opened amidst the ruins of his father's small and painfully-acquired means. A rude shieling was the dwelling of his childhood; some six months "buckled in the sum" of his school education; till nearly his manhood the Bible was his only reading; but the sunshine of the poetical fancy seems early to have flitted about his mind. To his mother, like many great men, he owed the nursing of the talent which God had given. Literature slowly shed her showers on his intellect; and, after a youth passed in sequestered regions in the care of a few sheep, he appeared before his countrymen as a claimant of the successorship to the throne of Burns. The first wealth his pen yielded was expended on an unlucky farming speculation. Driven to Edinburgh and to literature as a means of subsistence, the publication of the "Queen's Wake" in 1813 at length vindicated Lis position as a poet. In that year, a grant of the farm of Altrive in Ettrick, from his patron the Duke of Buccleuch, restored him to his original occupation. He married; leased the larger adjoining farm of Mount Benger, the failure of which again reduced him in a few years to poverty. During these years he continued to write voluminously; he was intimately connected for a considerable time with Blackwood's Magazine; he claims, indeed, the merit of founding that periodical. His poetry consists chiefly of songs, ballads, and elfin legends; he was at home in the fairy world, and it is in these gorgeous and airy regions in which his genius is chiefly conspicuous.

THE SKY-LARK.

BIRD of the wilderness,

Blythsome and cumberless,

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place—

O to abide in the desert with thee!

Wild is thy lay and loud

Far in the downy cloud,

Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.

Where, on thy dewy wing,

Where art thou journeying?

Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.

O'er fell and fountain sheen,

O'er moor and mountain green,

O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,

Over the cloudlet dim,

Over the rainbow's rim,

Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!

Then, when the gloaming comes,

Low in the heather blooms