Old household thoughts, in which thou hadst thy share;
But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee,
Found scarcely anywhere in like degree!
For love, that comes to all the holy sense,
Best gift of God—in thee was most intense,
A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind,
A tender sympathy, which did thee bind
Not only to us Men, but to thy Kind:
Yea, for thy Fellow-brutes in thee we saw
The soul of Love, Love's intellectual law:-
Hence, if we wept, it was not done in shame;
Our tears from passion and from reason came,
And, therefore, shalt thou be an honoured name!

So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive,
Would that the little flowers were born to live,
Conscious of half the pleasure which they give;

That to this mountain-daisy's self were known The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown On the smooth surface of this naked stone!

And what if hence a bold desire should mount High as the sun, that he could take account Of all that issues from his glorious fount!

So might he ken how by his sovereign aid
These delicate companionships are made;
And how he rules the pomp of light and shade;

And were the sister-power that shines by night
So privileged, what a countenance of delight
Would through the clouds break forth on human sight

Fond fancies! wheresoe'er shall turn thine eye On earth, air, ocean, or the starry sky, Converse with Nature in pure sympathy;

All vain desires, all lawless wishes quelled, Be thou to love and praise alike impelled, Whatever boon is granted or withheld.

WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF MACPHER.
SON'S OSSIAN.

OFT have I caught, upon a fitful breeze,
Fragments of far-off melodies,
With ear not coveting the whole,

A part so charmed the pensive soul:
While a dark storm before my sight
Was yielding, on a mountain height
Loose vapours have I watched, that won
Prismatic colours from the sun;

Nor felt a wish that Heaven would show
The image of its perfect bow.

What need, then, of these finished strains?
Away with counterfeit remains!

An abbey in its lone recess,

A temple of the wilderness,

Wrecks though they be, announce with feeling
The majesty of honest dealing.

Spirit of Ossian! if imbound

In language thou may'st yet be found,

If aught (intrusted to the pen

Or floating on the tongues of men,
Albeit shattered and impaired)
Subsist thy dignity to guard,

In concert with memorial claim

Of old gray stone, and high-born name,
That cleaves to rock or pillared cave,
Where moans the blast, or beats the wave,

Let Truth, stern Arbitress of all,
Interpret that Original,

And for presumptuous wrongs atone;
Authentic words be given, or none!

Time is not blind;-yet He, who spares
Pyramid pointing to the Stars,
Hath preyed with ruthless appetite
On all that marked the primal flight
Of the poetic ecstasy

Into the land of mystery.

No tongue is able to rehearse
One measure, Orpheus! of thy verse;
Museus, stationed with his lyre
Supreme among the Elysian quire,
Is, for the dwellers upon earth,
Mute as a Lark ere morning's birth.
Why grieve for these, though past away
The Music, and extinct the Lay?
When thousands, by severer doom,
Full early to the silent tomb

Have sunk, at Nature's call; or strayed
From hope and promise, self-betrayed;
The garland withering on their brows;
Stung with remorse for broken vows;
Franticelse how might they rejoice?
And friendless, by their own sad choice

Hail, Bards of mightier grasp! on you

I chiefly call, the chosen Few,

Who cast not off the acknowledged guide,
Who faltered not, nor turned aside;
Whose lofty Genius could survive
Privation, under sorrow thrive;

In whom the fiery Muse revered
The symbol of a snow-white beard,
Bedewed with meditative tears
Dropped from the lenient cloud of years.

Brothers in Soul! though distant times
Produced you, nursed in various climes,
Ye, when the orb of life had waned,
A plenitude of love retained;
Hence, while in you each sad regret
By corresponding hope was met,
Ye lingered among human kind,
Sweet voices for the passing wind;
Departing sunbeams, loth to stop,
Though smiling on the last hill top!

Such to the tender-hearted Maid
Even ere her joys begin to fade;
Such, haply, to the rugged Chief
By Fortune crushed, or tamed by grief,
Appears, on Morven's lonely shore,
Dim-gleaming through imperfect lore,

“Of man's inquiring gaze, but imaged to his hope "(Alas, how faintly!) in the hue "Profound of night's ethereal blue; "And in the aspect of each radiant orb;"Some fixed, some wandering with no timid curb; "But wandering star and fixed, to mortal eye, "Blended in absolute serenity,

"And free from semblance of decline;"Fresh as if Evening brought their natal hour; "Her darkness splendour gave, her silence power, "To testify of Love and Grace divine. — 'And though to every draught of vital breath Renewed throughout the bounds of earth or ocean,

Him rather suits it, side by side with thee,
Wrapped in a fit of pleasing indolence,
While thy tired lute hangs on the hawthorn tree
To lie and listen, till o'er-drowsed sense
Sinks, hardly conscious of the influence,
To the soft murmur of the vagrant Bee.
A slender sound! yet hoary Time

Doth to the Soul exalt it with the chime
Of all his years; -a company

Of ages coming, ages gone;
(Nations from before them sweeping,
Regions in destruction steeping,)
But every awful note in unison

With that faint utterance, which tells
Of treasure sucked from buds and bells,
For the pure keeping of those waxen cells;
Where She, a statist prudent to confer
Upon the public weal; a warrior bold,
Radiant all over with unburnished gold,
And armed with living spear for mortal fight
A cunning forager