Think for a moment on his wretched fate Whom friends and furtune quite disown! Stretched on his straw he lays himscif to sleep, Chill, o'er his slumbers, piles the drifty heap:- By cruel fortune's undeserved blow ? Shook off the powdery show, A cottage rousing crow. Through all his works abroad, Burme. SECTION III. The Cotter's Saturday Night, or a Scottish Peasant's Family Devotion. 1. The frugal supper done, with cheerful face, They round the fireside form a circle wide; The sire turns o’er with patriarchal grace, The sacred Bible once his father's pride: His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, His hoary locks displaying, thin and bare, Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He seeks a portion with judicious care; And “Let us worship God,” he says with solemn air. 2. They chant their artless notes in simple guise; They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim: i Perhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise, Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name; Or noble Elgin beats the heav'nward flame, The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays: Compar'd with these, Italian trills are tame, The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise, Nor unison have they with our Creator's praise. 8. The priest-like father reads the sacred page, How Abra'm was the friend of God on high; Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny.; Or, how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire ; Or, Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or, rapt Isaiah's wild seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. 4. Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme, How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed; How He, who bore in heav'n the second name, Had not on earth whereon to lay his head : How his first followers and servants sped ; The precepts sage they wrote to many a land: How he, who lone in Patmos banished, Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand; And heard great Babylon's doom pronounced by Heavenia command. 5. Then kneeling down, to Heaven's eternal King, The saint, the father, and the husband prays : Hope“ springs ex«!:ing on triumphant wing,” That thus they all shall meet in future days; There, ever bask in uncreated rays, No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear; Together hymning their Creator's praise, • In such society, yet still more dear, While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere. 6. Compar'd with this, how poor religion's pride, In all the pomp of method, and of art, When men display to congregations wide, Devotion's ev'ry grace, except the heart ! The pow'r incens'd the pageant will desert, The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole; But haply, in some cottage far apart, May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul : And in his book of life the inmates poor enrol.. 7. From scene's like these old Scotia's grandcur spring That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad ; Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, “ An honest man's the noblest work of God;" ind certain, in fair virtue's heav'nly road, The cottage leaves the palace far behind; What is a lordling's pomp? a cumbrous load, Disguising oft the wretch of human-kind, tudied in arts most vile, in wickedness refin'd!Bwrd SECTION IV. The Burial of Sir John Moore. As his corse o'er the rampart we hurried; O'er the grave where our hero we buried. The sod with our bayonets turning, And our lantern dimly burning. Nor in sheet, nor in shroud we bound him; His martial cloak wrapt around him. And we spoke not a word of sorrow; And bitterly thought of the morrow. And smooth'd down his lowly pillow, And we, far away o'er the billow. And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him ; In the grave where his comrades have laid hin. When the bell coll'd the hour for retiring; That the foe was then suddenly firing. From the field of his fame fresh and gory; But we left him alone-with his glory. Welfa. SECTION V. “Earth to Earth, and Dust to Dust." “Earth to earth, and dust to dust!" 2. Age on age shall roll along 3. But a day is coming fast, 4. Then shall come the judgment sign, 5. Then thy mount, Jerusalem, Crohy CHAPTER VI. SECTION I. The Rose of the Wilderness. I have mus'd in a sorrowsul mood, Where the home of my forefathers stood. And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree; And traveld by few is the grass-covered road, Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode, : To his hills that encircle the sea. By the dial stone aged and green, To mark where a garden had been. All wild in the silence of Nature, it drew, Where the flower of my forefathers grew. 8. Sweet bud of the wilderness! emblem of all That remains in this desolate heart ! The fabric of bliss to its center may fall ; But patience shall never depart! Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright, In the days of delusion by fancy combin'd, With the vanishing phantons of love and delight, Abandon my soul like a dream of the night, And leave but a desert behind. |