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STUDIES IN POETRY.

When, wildered, he drops from some cliff huge in stature,
And draws his last sob by the side of his dam.
And more stately thy couch by this desert lake lying,
Thy obsequies sung by the gay plover flying,
With one faithful friend but to witness thy dying,
In the arms of Hellvellyn and Catchedicam.

MOUNTAIN SCENERY IN SCOTLAND.

STRANGER! if ere thine ardent step hath traced
The northern realms of ancient Caledon,
Where the proud Queen of Wilderness hath placed,
By lake and cataract, her lonely throne;
Sublime but sad delight thy soul hath known,
Gazing on pathless glen and mountain high,
Listing where from the cliffs the torrents thrown
Mingle their echoes with the eagle's cry,

And with the sounding lake, and with the moaning sky.

:

Yes! 't was sublime, but sad.-The loneliness

Loaded thy heart, the desert tired thine eye;
And strange and awful fears began to press
Thy bosom with a stern solemnity.

Then hast thou wished some woodman's cottage nigh,
Something that showed of life, though low and mean,
Glad sight, its curling wreath of smoke to spy,

Glad sound, its cock's blithe carol would have been,
Or children whooping wild beneath the willows green.

Such are the scenes where savage grandeur wakes
An awful thrill that softens into sighs;
Such feelings rouse them by dim Rannoch's lakes,
In dark Glencoe such gloomy raptures rise:
Or farther, where, beneath the northern skies,
Chides wild Loch-Eribol his caverns hoar-
But, be the minstrel judge, they yield the prize
Of desert dignity to that dread shore,
That sees grim Coolin rise, and hears Corisken roar.

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SCENERY AROUND LOCK KATRINE.

THE western waves of ebbing day
Rolled o'er the glen their level way:
Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire.
But not a setting beam could glow
Within the dark ravines below,

Shooting abruptly from the dell
Its thunder-splintered pinnacle;
Round many an insulated mass,
The native bulwarks of the pass,
Huge as the tower which builders vain
Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain.
Their rocky summits, split and rent,
Formed turret, dome, or battlement,
Or seemed fantastically set
With cupola or minaret,

Wild crests as pagod ever decked,
Or mosque of eastern architect.

Nor were these earth-born castles bare,
Nor lacked they many a banner fair;
For, from their shivered brows displayed,
Far o'er the unfathomable glade,

All twinkling with the dew-drop sheen,
The briar-rose fell in streamers green,
And creeping shrubs of thousand dies,
Waved in the west-wind's summer sighs.

Boon nature scattered, free and wild,
Each plant or flower, the mountain's child;
Here eglantine embalmed the air,
Hawthorn and hazel mingled there ;
The primrose pale, and violet flower,
Found in each cleft a narrow bower;
Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side,
Emblems of punishment and pride,
Grouped their dark hues with every stain,
The weather-beaten crags retain ;
With boughs that quaked at every breath,
Gray birch and aspen wept beneath;
Aloft, the ash and warrior oak
Cast anchor in the rifted rock;

And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung
His scattered trunk, and frequent flung,
Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high,
His bows athwart the narrowed sky.

Highest of all, where white peaks glanced,
Where glistening streamers waved and danced,
The wanderer's eye could barely view

The summer heaven's delicious blue;

So wondrous wild, the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream.

Onward, amid the copse 'gan peep
A narrow inlet still and deep,

Affording scarce such breadth of brim,
As served the wild duck's brood to swim;

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Lost for a space, through thickets veering,
But broader when again appearing;
Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face
Could on the dark-blue mirror trace;
And farther as the hunter strayed,
Still broader sweep its channels made.
The shaggy mounds no longer stood,
Emerging from entangled wood,
But, wave-encircled, seemed to float,
Like castle girdled with its moat;
Yet broader floods extending still,
Divide the n from their parent hill,
Till each, retiring, claims to be
An islet in an inland sea.

And now, to issue from the glen,
No pathway meets the wanderer's ken,
Unless he climb, with footing nice,
A far projecting precipice.

The broom's tough roots his ladder made,
The hazel saplings lent their aid;
And thus an airy point he won,

Where, gleaming with the setting sun,
One burnished sheet of living gold,
Lock-Katrine lay beneath him rolled;
In all her length far-winding lay,
With promontory, creek, and bay,
And islands that, empurpled bright,
Floated amid the livelier light;
And mountains, that like giants stand
To sentinel enchanted land.

High on the south, huge Ben-Venue

Down to the lake in masses threw

Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world;

A wildering forest feathered o'er

His ruined sides and summit hoar,

While on the north, through middle air,
Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.

From the steep promontory gazed
The stranger, raptured and amazed,

And, "what a scene were here," he cried,
"For princely pomp or churchman's pride!

On this bold brow, a lordly tower;

In that soft vale, a lady's bower;

On youder meadow, far away,
The turrets of a cloister gray,
How blithely might the bugle horn

Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn!

How sweet, at eve, the lover's lute

Chime, when the groves were still and mute! And, when the midnight moon did lave

Her forehead in the silver wave,

How solemn on the ear would come
The holy matin's distant hum,

While the deep peal's commanding tone
Should wake, in yonder islet lone,
A sainted hermit from his cell,
To drop a bead with every knell-
And bugle, lute, and bell, and all,
Should each bewildered stranger call
To friendly feast, and lighted hall.

But

"Blithe were it then to wander here!
now,-beshrew yon nimble deer,-
Like that same hermit's, thin and spare,
The copse must give my evening fare;
Some mossy bank my couch must be,
Some rustling oak my canopy.
Yet pass we that;-the war and chase
Give little choice of resting place ;-
A summer night, in green wood spent,
Were but to-morrow's merriment ;-
But hosts may in these wilds abound,
Such as are better missed than found;
To meet with highland plunderers here
Were worse than loss of steed or deer.
I am alone ;-my bugle strain

May call some straggler of the train;
Or, fall the worst that may betide,
Ere now this falchion has been tried."

But scarce again his horn he wound,
When lo! forth starting at the sound,
From underneath an aged oak,
That slanted from the islet rock,
A damsel guider of its way,
A little skiff shot to the bay,
That round the promontory steep
Led its deep line in graceful sweep,
Eddying, in almost viewless wave,
The weeping willow twig to lave,
And kiss, with whispering sound and slow,
The beach of pebbles bright as snow.

The boat had touched this silver strand,

Just as the hunter left his stand,

And stood concealed amid the brake

To view this Lady of the Lake.

The maiden paused, as if again

She thought to catch the distant strain,
With head up-raised and look intent,
And eye and ear attentive bent,
And locks flung back, and lips apart,
Like monument of Grecian art.

In listening mood she seemed to stand,
The guardian Naiad of the strand.

SONG OF MEG MERRILIES AT THE BIRTH OF THE INFANT.

"She sat upon a broken corner-stone in the angle of a paved apartment, part of which she had swept clean to afford a smooth space for the evolutions of her spindle. A strong sunbeam, through a lofty and nar row window, fell upon her wild dress and features, and afforded her light for her occupation; the rest of the apartment was very gloomy. Equipt in a habit which mingled the national dress of the Scottish common people with something of an eastern costume, she spun a thread, drawn from wool of three different colours, black, white, and gray, by assistance of those ancient implements of housewifery now almost banished from the land, the distaff and spindle. As she spun, she sung what seemed to be a charm. Mannering, after in vain attempting to make himself master of the exact words of her song, afterwards attempted the following paraphrase of what, from a few intelligible phrases, he concluded to be its purport:"

TWIST ye, twine ye! even so,
Mingle shades of joy and woe,
Hope, and fear, and peace, and strife,
In the thread of human life.

While the mystic twist is spinning,
And the infant's life beginning,
Dimly seen through twilight bending,
Lo, what varied shapes attending!

Passions wild, and follies vain,
Pleasure soon exchanged for pain;
Doubt, and jealousy, and fear,
In the magic dance appear.

Now they wax, and now they dwindle
Whirling with the whirling spindle.
Twist ye, twine ye! even so,

Mingle human bliss and woe.

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SONG OF MEG MERRILIES FOR THE PARTING SPIRIT.

Upon a lair composed of straw, with a blanket stretched over it, lay a figure, so still, that, except that it was not dressed in the ordinary habiliments of the grave, Brown would have concluded it to be a corpse. On a steadier view he perceived it was only on the point of becoming so, for he heard one or two of those low, deep, and hard

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