PRESENTIMENTS. PRESENTIMENTS! they judge not right All heaven-born instincts shun the touch Such privilege ye claim. The tear whose source I could not guess, And now, unforced by time to part And venture on your praise. What though some busy foes to good, Lurk near you-and combine How oft from you, derided powers! And teach us to beware. The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift, Shall vanish, if ye please, Star-guided contemplations move Through space, though calm, not raised above The naked Indian of the wild, But who can fathom your intents, A subtle smell that spring unbinds, The laughter of the Christmas hearth, And daily, in the conscious breast, And exercise of love. When some great change gives boundless scope Oft, startled and made wise Ye daunt the proud array of war, For dancers in the festive hall That men have lived for whom, Should knell them to the tomb. God, who instructs the brutes to scent Whose wisdom fix'd the scale TO THE DAISY. IN youth from rock to rock I went, Most pleased when most uneasy; Thee winter in the garland wears In shoals and bands, a morrice train, Yet nothing daunted Nor grieved if thou be set at nought: Be violets in their secret mews Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim, If to a rock from rains he fly, And wearily at length should fare; He needs but look about, and there Thou art!-a friend at hand, to scare His melancholy. A hundred times, by rock or bower, Some steady love; some brief delight; If stately passions in me burn, And one chance look to thee should turn, I drink out of an humbler urn, A lowlier pleasure; The homely sympathy that heeds Fresh-smitten by the morning ray, And when, at dusk. by dews opprest, And all day long I number yet, An instant call it, a blind sense; Coming one knows not how, nor whence, Nor whither going. Child of the year! that round dost run Thy pleasant course,-when day's begun, As ready to salute the sun As lark or leveret, Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain; SHE DWELT AMONG THE UNTRODDEN WAYS. SHE dwelt among the untrodden way A maid, whom there were none to praise, A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown-and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, ODE TO DUTY. STERN daughter of the voice of God! To check the erring, and reprove; There are who ask not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth, Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth: Glad hearts! without reproach or blot; Who do thy work and know it not; Oh! if through confidence misplaced They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around them cast. Serene will be our days and bright, And happy will our nature be, When love is an unerring light, And joy its own security. And they a blissful course may hold Yet find thy firm support, according to their need. I, loving freedom, and untried; No sport of every random gust, Yet being to myself a guide, Too blindly have reposed my trust: And oft, when in my heart was heard Thy timely mandate, I deferr'd The task, in smoother walks to stray; But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I Through no disturbance of my soul, Or strong compunction in me wrought, I supplicate for thy control; But in the quietness of thought: Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear As is the smile upon thy face: may. Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong. To humbler functions, awful Power! Oh, let my weakness have an end! The confidence of reason give;. And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live! F AN INCIDENT AT BRUGES. Flung from a convent-tower, A harp that tuneful prelude made The measure, simple truth to tell, It was a breezy hour of eve; Not always is the heart unwise, If even a passing stranger sighs For them who do not mourn. Such feeling pressed upon my soul, By one soft trickling tear that stole THE SOLITARY REAPER. BEHOLD her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland lass! Stop here, or gently pass! No nightingale did ever chant More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands: Such thrilling voice was never heard Will no one tell me what she sings? And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, And o'er the sickle bending. AUTUMN. THE sylvan slopes with corn-clad fields The mountains looking on. And, sooth to say, yon vocal grove, By love untaught to ring, For that from turbulence and heat This, this is holy; while I hear This hymn of thanks and praise, And earth's precarious days. But list!-though winter storms be nigh, Uncheck'd is that soft harmony: There lives Who can provide For all his creatures; and in Him, Even like the radiant seraphim, These choristers confide. SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT. SHE was a phantom of delight, When first she gleam'd upon my sight; A lovely apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; I saw her upon nearer view, A spirit, yet a woman too! Her household motions light and free, A countenance in which did meet And now I see with eye serene A MOUNTAIN SOLITUDE. It was a cove, a huge recess, That keeps till June December's snow; A lofty precipice in front, A silent tarn below! There sometimes does a leaping fish Send through the tarn a lonely cheer; The crags repeat the raven's croak In symphony austere; Thither the rainbow comes, the cloud; And mists that spread the flying shroud, And sun-beams; and the sounding blast, That, if it could, would hurry past, But that enormous barrier binds it fast. SIR WALTER SCOTT. WALTER SCOTT was born in Edinburgh on the fifteenth of August, 1771. "My birth," says he, "was neither distinguished nor sordid; according to the prejudices of my country it was esteemed gentle, as I was connected, though remotely, with ancient families, both by my father's and mother's side." Delicacy of constitution, attended by a lameness which proved permanent, was apparent in his infancy, and induced his removal to the rural residence of his grandfather, near the Tweed, where he remained until about the eighth year of his age. In the introduction to the third canto of Marmion he has graphically described the scenery by which he was surrounded, his interest in its ruins and his sympathy with its grandeur and beauty. The romantic ballads and legends to which he listened here were treasured in his memory, and had a powerful influence upon his future character. From 1779 to 1783 he was in the high school of Edinburgh. He tells us, alluding to this period, that he had a reputation as a tale-teller, and that the applause of his companions was a recompense for the disgraces and punishments he incurred by being idle himself and keeping others idle during hours which should have been devoted to study. In 1783 he became a student in the university, but his education proceeded unprosperously. He had no inclination for science, and was a careless learner of the languages, though he acquired the French, Italian, and Spanish, so as to read them with sufficient ease. In 1786 he entered the law office of his father, and in 1792, being then nearly twentyone years of age, he was called to the bar. He paid little attention to his profession, but was an industrious reader of romantic literature, in his own and foreign languages, especially in the German, with which he had recently become familiar. The position of his family, and his own cheerful temper and fine colloquial abilities, procured him admission to the best society of the city, and led to his acquaintance with a young lady by whose marriage long and fondly-cherished hopes were disappointed. Her image was for ever in his | memory, and inspired some of the most beautiful passages in his poetry. In 1797, however, he became acquainted with Miss CHarpentier, the daughter of a French refugee, to whom, in the autumn of that year, he was married. Previous to this time M. G. LEWIS had acquired considerable reputation by his imitations of the German ballads; and conceiving that if inferior to him in poetical powers, he was his superior in general information, SCOTT had undertaken to become his rival. His earliest efforts, translations of BURGER'S Leonore and Wild Huntsman, were published in 1796, and two years afterward appeared in London his version of GOETHE'S Goetz von Berlichingen. Each of these volumes was favourably reviewed, but coldly received by the public. Soon after his marriage ScoTT had taken a pleasant house on the banks of the Tweed, about thirty miles from Edinburgh. By the death of his father he had come into possession of a considerable income; his wife had an annuity of four hundred pounds; and the office of sheriff of Selkirkshire, which imposed very little duty, now produced him some three hundred more. At twenty-eight years of age few men were more happily situated, but he had as yet done scarcely any thing toward founding a reputation as a man of letters. His leisure hours were for several years devoted to the preparation of The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, the third and last volume of which appeared in 1803. This work gave him at once an enviable position. He soon after visited London, where he formed friendships with the leading authors of the day, and in the beginning of 1805 he placed himself in the list of classic writers by the publication of his first great original work, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, which was received with universal applause, and of which more than thirty thousand copies were sold in the ensuing twenty years. The limits of this biography forbid any thing more than an allusion to Scort's obtaining one of the principal clerkships in the Scottish Court of Session, his quarrel with Constable, partnership with Ballantyne, esta |