WHEN I dream that you love me, you'll surely forgive,
Extend not your anger to sleep;
For in visions alone your affection can live,-
I rise, and it leaves me to weep.
Then, Morpheus! envelope my faculties fast,
Shed o'er me your languor benign;
Should the dream of to-night but resemble the last,
What rapture celestial is mine!
They tell us that slumber, the sister of death,
Mortality's emblem is given :
To fate how I long to resign my frail breath,
If this be a foretaste of heaven.
Ah! frown not, sweet lady, unbend your soft brow,
Nor deem me too happy in this
If I sin in my dream, I atone for it now,
Thus doom'd but to gaze upon bliss.
Though in visions, sweet lady, perhaps you may
smile,
Oh! think not my penance deficient!
When dreams of your presence my slumber beguile,
To awake will be torture sufficient.
Awake, with it my fancy teems;
In sleep, it smiles in fleeting dreams
The vision charms the hours away,
And bids me curse Aurora's ray
For breaking slumbers of delight
Which make me wish for endless night.
Since, oh! whate'er my future fate,
Shall joy or wo my steps await,
Tempted by love, by storms beset,
Thine image I can ne'er forget.
Alas! again no more we meet,
No more our former looks repeat;
Then let me breathe this parting prayer
The dictate of my bosom's care :
"May heaven so guard my lovely Quaker,
That anguish never can o'ertake her;
That peace and virtue ne'r forsake her,
But bliss be aye her heart's partaker ;
Oh! may the happy mortal, fated
To be by dearest ties, related,
For her each hour new joys discover,
And lose the husband in the lover!
May that fair bosom never know
What 'tis to feel the restless wo
Which stings the soul with vain regret,
Of him who never can forget!"
SWEET girl! though only once we met,
That meeting I shall ne'er forget;
And though we ne'er may meet again,
Remembrance will thy form retain.
I would not say, "I love," but still
My senses struggle with my will:
In vain to drive thee from my breast,
My thoughts are more and more represt;
In vain I check the rising sighs,
Another to the last replies:
Perhaps this is not love, but yet
Our meeting I can ne'er forget.
What though we never silence broke,
Our eyes a sweeter language spoke ;
The tongue in flattering falsehood deals,
And tells a tale it never feels:
Deceit the guilty lips impart,
And hush the mandates of the heart;
But soul's interpreter, the eyes,
Spurn such restraint, and scorn disguise.
As thus our glances oft conversed,
And all our bosoms felt rehearsed,
No spirit, from within reproved us,
Say rather, "'twas the spirit moved us.
Though what they utter'd I repress,
Yet I conceive thou'lt partly guess;
For as on thee my memory ponders,
Perchance to me thine also wanders.
This for myself, at least, I'll say,
WHEN I roved a young Highlander o'er the dark heath,
And climb'd thy steep summit, oh Morven, of
To gaze on the torrent that thunder'd beneath,
Or the mist of the tempest that gathered below, ‡
Untutor❜d by science, a stranger to fear,
And rude as the rocks where my infancy grew,
No feeling, save one, to my bosom was dear;
Need I say, my sweet Mary, 'twas centred in you?
Yet it could not be love, for I knew not the name,-
What passion can dwell in the heart of a child?
But still I perceive an emotion the same
As I felt, when a boy, on the crag-cover'd wild.
One image alone on my bosom impress'd,
I loved my bleak regions, nor panted for new; And few were my wants, for my wishes were bless'd; And pure were my thoughts, for my soul was with
I arose with the dawn; with my dog as my guide,
From mountain to mountain I bounded along;
I breasted the billow of Dee's || rushing tide,
And heard at a distance the Highlander's song:
* To Mary Duff. First published in the second edition of Hours a Idleness.
† Morven, a lofty mountain in Aberdeenshire: "Gormal of snow," is an expression frequently to be found in Ossian.
This will not appear extraordinary to those who have been accustomed to the mountains; it is by no means uncommon on attaining the top of Bene-vis Ben-y-bourd, &c., to perceive between the summit and the valley, clouds pouring down rain, and occasionally accompanied by lightning, while the
Thy form appears through night, through day spectator literally looks down upon the storm, perfectly secure from its effects.
* These lines were published in the private volume, and the first edition of Hours of Idleness, but subsequently omitted by the author.
§ Breasting the lofty surge.-Shakspeare.
The Dee is a beautiful river, which rises near Mar Lodge, and falls inte
When I see some dark hill point its crest to the For the present, we part-I will hope not for ever,
For time and regret will restore you at last; To forget our dissension we both should endeavor, I ask no atonement but days like the past.
IN law an infant,† and in years a boy,
In mind a slave to every vicious joy;
From every sense of shame and virtue wean'd;
In lies an adept, in deceit a fiend;
Versed in hypocrisy while yet a child;
Fickle as wind, of inclinations wild;
Woman his dupe, his heedless friend a tool;
Old in the world, though scarcely broke from school;
Damætas ran through all the maze of sin,
And found the goal when others just begin:
Even still conflicting passions shake his soul,
And bid him drain the dregs of pleasure's bowl;
But, pall'd with vice, he breaks his former chain,
And what was once his bliss appears his bane.
'Tis not love disturbs thy rest, Love's a stranger to thy breast; He in dimpling smiles appears,
Or mourns in sweetly timid tears,
Or bends the languid eyelid down,
But shuns the cold forbidding frown.
Then resume thy former fire,
Some will love, and all admire;
While that icy aspect chills us,
Nought but cool indifference thrills us.
Wouldst thou wandering hearts beguile,
Smile at least, or seem to smile.
Eyes like thine were never meant
To hide their orbs in dark restraint;
Spite of all thou fain wouldst say,
Still in truant beams they play.
Thy lips-but here my modest Muse
Her impulse chaste must needs refuse:
She blushes, curt'sies, frowns,-in short, she
Dreads lest the subject should transport me;
And flying off in search of reason,
Brings prudence back in proper season.
All I shall therefore say (whate’er
I think, is neither here, nor there)
Is, that such lips, of looks endearing,
Were form'd for better things than sneering:
Of soothing compliments divested,
Advice at least's disinterested;
Such is my artless song to thee,
From all the flow of flattery free;
Counsel like mine is as a brother's,
My heart is given to some others;
That is to say, unskill'd to cozen,
It shares itself among a dozen.
Marion, adieu! oh! pr'ythee slight not
This warning, though it may delight not;
And, lest my precepts be displeasing
To those who think remonstrance teasing,
At once I'll tell thee our opinion
Concerning woman's soft dominion:
Howe'er we gaze with admiration
On eyes of blue or lips carnation,
Howe'er the flowing locks attract us,
Howe'er those beauties may distract us,
Still fickle, we are prone to rove,
These cannot fix our souls to love:
It is not too severe a stricture
To say they form a pretty picture:
But wouldst thou see the secret chain,
Which binds us to your humble train,
To hail you queens of all creation,
Know, in a word, 'tis ANIMATION.
MARION! why that pensive brow? What disgust to life hast thou ? Change that discontented air:
Frowns become not one so fair.
* The Goddess of Justice.
How sweetly shines, through azure skies. The lamp of heaven on Lora's shore;
Where Alva's hoary turrets rise,
And hear the din of arms no more.
* This poem was published for the first time in Hours of Idleness.
†The catastrophe of this tale was suggested by the story of "Jeronymo
la law every person is an infant who has not attained the age of twenty- and Lorenzo," in the first volume of the "Armenian, or Ghost-Seer."
also bears some resemblance to a scene in the third act of “Macbeth.”
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