LINES

| Their lives did not end when they yielded their

breath; ADDRESSED TO THE REV. J. T. BECHER, ON HIS

Their glory illumines the gloom of their grave. ADVISING THE AUTHOR TO MIX MORE WITH

SOCIETY.
Dear Becher, you tell me to mix with mankind;

| Yet why should I mingle in Fashion's full herd ? I cannot deny such a precept is wise ;

Why crouch to her leaders, or cringe to her But retirement accords with the tone of my mind : u

rules ? I will not descend to a world I despise.

| Why bend to the proud, or applaud the absurd ?

Why search for delight in the friendship of fools ? Did the senate or camp my exertions require,

Ambition might prompt me at once to go forth; I have tasted the sweets and the bitters of love : When infancy's years of probation expire,

In friendship I early was taught to believe; Perchance I may strive to distinguish my birth.

My passion the matrons of prudence reprove; The fire in the cavern of Etna conceal'd,

I have found that a friend may profess, yet Still mantles unseen in its secret recess :

deceive. At length in a volume terrific revealid, No torrent can quench it, no bonds can repress. To me what is wealth P-it may pass in an hour,

If tyrants prevail, or if Fortune should frown; Oh! thus the desire in my bosom for fame,

To me what is title ?-the phantom of power; Bids me live but to hope for posterity's praise. To me what is fashion ?-I seek but renown. Could I soar with the phenix on pinions of flame, With him I would wish to expire in the blaze.

| Deceit is a stranger as yet to my soul : For the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death,

I still am unpractised to varnish the truth : What censure, what danger, what woe would I Then why should I live in a hateful control ? brave !

Why waste upon folly the days of my youth ?

Occasional Pieces.

FROM 1807 TO 1816.

For the liquor he drank, being too much for one,
He could not carry off, --so he's now carri-on.

ON REVISITING HARROW. HERE once engaged the stranger'3 view

Young Friendship's record simply traced ; Few were her words, but yet, though few,

Resentment's hand the line defaced.
Deeply she cut-but not erased,

The characters were still so plain,
That friendship once return'd, and gazed-

Till Memory hail'd the words again.
Repentance placed them as before,

Forgiveness join'd her gentle name; So fair the inscription seem'd once more,

That Friendship thought it still the same. Tbus might the record now have been ;

But, ah! in spite of Hope's endeavour, Or Friendship's tears, Pride rush'd between,

And blotted out the line for ever.

VERSES FOUND IN A SUMMER-HOUSE

AT HALES-OWEN.
WHEN Dryden's fool,1 "unknowing what he
His hours in whistling spent, “ for want of thought,”
This guiltless oaf his vacancy of sense
Supplied, and amply too, by innocence.
Did modern swains, possessed of Cymon's powers,
In Cymon's manner waste their leisure hours,
Th' offended guests would not, with blushing, see
These fair green walks disgraced by infamy.
Severe the fate of modern fools, alas!
When vice and folly mark them as they pass,
Like noxious reptiles o'er the whitend wall,
The filth they leave still points out where they

crawl.

EPITAPH ON JOHN ADAMS OF SOUTH.

WELL,
A CARRIER, WHO DIED OF DRUNKENNESS.
John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell,

ll,
A Carrier who carried his can to his mouth well :
He carried so much, and he carried so fast,
He could carry no more-so was carried at last;

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.
I SPEAK not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name;
There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the

fame :

(1) See Dryden's "Cymon and Iphigenia.”

But the tear which now burns on my cheek may l 'Tis heaven-not man-must charm away the woe, impart

Which bursts when nature's feelings newly flow, The deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of Yet tenderness and time may rob the tear heart.

Of half its bitterness, for one so dear;

A nation's gratitude perchance may spread Too brief for our passion, too long for our peace, A thornless pillow for the widow's head ; Were those hours—can their joy or their bitterness May lighten well her heart's maternal care, cease?

And wean from penury the soldier's heir. We repent, we abjure, we will break from our

chain,We will part, we will fly to-unite it again!

TO BELSHAZZAR. Oh! thine be the gladness, and mine be the guilt!

BELSHAZZAR! from the banquet turn, Forgive me, adored one!-forsake if thou wilt ;

Nor in thy sensual fulness fall ; But the heart which is thine shall expire undebased,

Behold! while yet before thee burn And man shall not break it-whatever thou may'st.

The graven words, the glowing wall.

Many a despot men miscall And stern to the haughty, but humble to thee,

Crown'd and anointed from on high ; This soul in its bitterest blackness shall be ;

But thou, the weakest, worst of all And our days seem as swift, and our moments Is it not written, thou must die ?

more sweet, With thee by my side, than with worlds at my feet. Go! dash the roses from thy brow

Grey hairs but poorly wreath with them: One sigh of thy sorrow, one look of thy love,

Youth's garlands misbecome thee now, Shall turn me or fix, shall reward or reprove;

More than thy very diadem, And the heartless may wonder at all I resign

Where thou hast tarnish'd every gem :Thy lip shall reply, not to them, but to mine.

Then throw the worthless bauble by, Which, worn by thee, ev'n slaves contemn;

And learn like better men to die !

Ob! early in the balance weigh’d,
ADDRESS

And ever light of word and worth,

Whose soul expired ere youth decay'd,
INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SPOKEN AT THE

And left thee but a mass of earth.
CALEDONIAN MEETING, 18]4.

To see thee inoves the scorner's mirth:

But tears in Hope's averted eye
Wuo hath not glow'd above the page where fame

Lament that ever thou hadst birth-
Hath fix'd high Caledon's unconquer'd name ;
The mountain land which spurn'd the Roman chain,

Unfit to govern, live, or die.
And baffled back the fiery-crested Dane;
Whose bright claymore and hardihood of hand
No foe could tame--no tyrant could command !

A FRAGMENT.
That race is gone-but still their children breathe,
And glory crowns them with redoubled wreath: COULD I remount the river of my years,
O'er Gael and Saxon mingling banners shine, To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,
And, England! add their stubborn strength to I would not trace again the stream of hours
thine.

Between their outworn banks of wither'd flowers,
The blood which flow'd with Wallace flows as free, But bid it flow as now-until it glides
But now 'tis only shed for fame and thee!

Into the number of the nameless tides.
Oh! pass not by the northern veteran's claim,
But give support—the world hath given him fame!

What is this Death |--a quiet of the heart ?
The humbler ranks, the lowly brave, who bled, The whole of that of which we are a part ?
Wbile cheerly following where the mighty led For life is but a vision-what I see
Who sleep beneath the undistinguished sod,

Of all that lives alone is life to me; Where happier comrades in their triumph trod, And being so—the absent are the dead, To us bequeath-'tis all their fate allows

Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread The sireless offspring and the lonely spouse :

A dreary shroud around us, and invest
She on high Albyn's dusky bills may raise

With sad remembrances our hours of rest.
The tearful eye in melancboly gaze ;
Or view, while shadowy auguries disclose,

The absent are the dead-for they are cold, The Highland seer's anticipated woes,

And ne'er can be what once we did behoid; The bleeding phantom of each martial form, And they are changed, and cheerless,-or if yet Dim in the cloud, or darkling in the storm;

The unforgotten do not all forget, While sad she chants the solitary song,

Since thus divided-equal must it be The soft lament for him who tarries long

If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea ; For him, whose distant relics vainly crave

It may be both—but one day end it must, The cronach's wild requiem to the brave !

In the dark union of insensate dust.

And apathy of limb, the dull beginning

Cities and generations-fair, when freeOf the cold staggering race which Death is win- For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee!

ning, Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away;

III. Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay,

Glory and Empire ! once upon these towers To him appears renewal of his breath,

With Freedom-godlike Triad ! how ye sate! And freedom the mere numbness of his chain ; The league of the mightiest nations, in those hours And then he talks of life, and how again

When Venice was an envy, might abate, He feels his spirit soaring-albeit weak,

But did not quench her spirit ; in her fate And of the fresher air, which he would seek : All were enwrapp'd : the feasted monarchs knew And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,

And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate, That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,

Although they humbled with the kingly few And so the film comes o'er him, and the dizzy The many felt, for from all days and climes Chamber swims round and round, and shadows She was the voyager's worship; even lier crimes busy,

| Were of the softer order-born of Love, At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam,

She drank no blood, nor fatten’d on the dead, Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream, But gladden'd where her harmless conquests spread; And all is ice and blackness—and the earth

For these restored the Cross, that from above That which it was the moment ere our birth. | Hallow'd her sheltering banners, which incessant

Flew between earth and the unholy Crescent,

Which, if it waned and dwindled, Earth may thank II.

The city it has clothed in chains, which clank There is no bope for nations !-Search the page Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe

Of many thousand years—the daily scene, The name of Freedom to her glorious struggles ; The flow and ebb of each recurring age,

Yet she but shares with them a common woe, The everlasting to be which hath been,

And call'd the “ kingdom ” of a conquering foe, Hath taught us nought, or little : still we lean | But knows what all-and, most of all, we knowOn things that rot beneath our weight, and wear With what set gilded terms a tyraut juggles ! Our strength away in wrestling with the air : For 'tis our nature strikes us down : the beasts

iv. Slaughter'd in hourly hecatombs for feasts

The name of Commonwealth is past and gone Are of as high an order-they must go

O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe; Even where their driver goads them, though to Venice is crush’d, and Holland deigns to own slaughter.

A sceptre, and endures the purple robe ;
Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water, If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone
What have they given your children in return? His chainless mountains, 'tis but for a time,
A heritage of servitude and woes,

For tyranny of late is cunning grown,
A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows. And in its own good season tramples down
What! do not yet the red-hot ploughshares burn, The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime,
O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,

Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean
And deem this proof of loyalty the real;

Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars, Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and And glorying as you tread the glowing bars? Bequeath'

d a heritage of heart and hand, All that your sires bave left you, all that Time And proud distinction from each other land, Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,

Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's motion, Spring from a different theme! Ye see and read, As if his senseless sceptre were a wand Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed! | Full of the magic of exploded scienceSave the few spirits who, despite of all,

Still one great clime, in full and free defiance, And worse than all, the sudden crimes engender'd Yet rears her crest, unconquer'd and sublime, By the down-thundering of the prison-wall, | Above the far Atlantic !-She has taught And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tender'd, Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag, Gushing from Freedom's fountains, when the The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag, crowd,

May strike to those whose red right hands have Madden'd with centuries of drought, are loud,

bought And trample on each other to obtain

Rights cheaply earn’d with blood. Still, still for The cup which brings oblivion of a chain

ever, Heavy and sore, in which long yoked they plough'd Better, though each man's life-blood were a river, The sand,-or if there sprung the yellow grain, That it should flow, and overflow, than creep 'Twas not for them, their necks were too much Through thousand lazy channels in our veins, bow'd,

Damm'd like the dull canal with locks and chains, And their dead palates chew'd the cud of pain: And moving, as a sick man in his sleep, Yes! the few spirits,-who, despite of deeds Three paces, and then faltering :-better be Which they ablor, confound not with the cause Where the extinguish'd Spartans still are free, Those momentary starts from Nature's laws, In their proud charnel of Thermopylae, Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite Than stagnate in our marsh,-or o'er the deep But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth | Fly, and one current to the ocean add, With all her seasons to repair the blight

One spirit to the souls our fathers had, With a few summers, and again put forth

| One freeman more, America, to thee!