JOHN WATSON DALBY.

I.

AT BERKHAMSTEAD.

WATERS! all calm and bright as heaven above,
In peace and beauty still your course pursuing ;
Ruins! and ye wild springs! that fondly love

To throw a deathless sweetness over ruin;
Hills! o'er whose brows in other days we bounded
When fresh delight was in our hearts and eyes,
And all that lay before us or surrounded,

Shone with a beauty heightened by surprise :

Had earth a stray bliss, then the quick sense found it,
From morn's first blush to ray of evening star;
And then the natural revel well we rounded,

Lifting full cups to loving hearts afar.

Well may our own faint, staggered and astounded,

At thought of what and where those loved ones are.

II.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

THE mirror of my life, ye lie before me!
Reflecting all its gladness and its gloom;
There the wild joy ye never may restore me,
That, when I saw ye first, came flushing o'er me;
And there the eternal barrier of the tomb.

Crowding upon me here what memories come,
Glad meeting, pleasant lingering, and gay strolling :
Alas, how briefly shines the vision for me!
Away the glory and the joy are rolling, —
Away the glowing Future which it bore me!
And through the mind, confusing sense and sight,
Comes to my startled ear the death-bell tolling;
And a shroud covers Beauty and Delight,
Mantling the gauds of morn in glooms of night.

III.

A WAYSIDE ADVENTURE.

He was a native of the North countrie,
But left it early, an adventurous lad;
His look I know not if severe or sad,
Shrewd surely and with even a latent glee ;
And a broad deeply-furrowed brow had he.
Albeit no Scot, the accent made me glad,
Awaking love and kindly memory.

"With song and friendship we are wisely mad,"
Methought; "and this shall be a merry hour.
Of this man's soul I hold the secret key:
Grave, silent, strong, yet shall he feel my power,
And that of the heart-linker, Sympathy.

One word shall bring the land for which he yearns, One magic word."

- I spoke it, it was Burns.

IV.

SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

THEN Scotia came to him, and Auld Lang Syne,

And he poured out the story of his life,

Loves, struggles, studies, hope, despair, and strife; Much thanks, some murmurs, but no childish whine; And ever and anon the well-loved line

That fixed a principle or stamped a truth,

And crowned in manhood the best dreams of youth, Ne'er seemed the Bard of Ayr so all divine. That wayside Inn shall be remembered yet,

And all our gossip o'er that humble glass. By chance and in a chimney nook we met,

And Burns and Nature glorified the place.

V.

TWELVE

A SLEEPLESS NIGHT.

but Macaulay had but now been closed;

Sleep could not quickly follow page so fine;

One and strange figures filled my wakeful eye; Two and the lightning finds those eyes unclosed; Three and for no brief instant had I dozed;

-

Four - and slow morn did on the casement shine,

But where my strength for challenge so divine?
Five still for slumber wholly indisposed

-

I on my restless pillow turn and twist,
Reaching a hopeful weariness by six;
And then all sense of outer objects missed,
I with the Cavaliers and Roundheads mix
Awhile, to rise an irate rogue, perplexed,
Vexing the house because myself am vexed.