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BOTHWELL A PRISONER IN THE CASTLE OF MALMOE,
DENMARK.

The sun is bright, the day is warm,
The breeze is blowing free-

Come, I will rouse me from my lair,

And look upon the sea.

'Tis clear and blue, with here and there
A little fleck of foam;

And yonder glides a stately ship,
Bound on her voyage home.
The fishers, on the scanty sward,
Spread out their nets to dry,

And whistle o'er their lazy task
In happy vacancy.

Swift by the window skims the tern,

On light and glancing wing,

And every sound that rises up
Gives token of the spring.

Y

533

Fair is the sight, yet strange to me ;
No memories I recall,

While gazing on the headland cliffs,
And waves that leap and fall.
No visions of my boyish days,
Or manhood's sterner prime,
Arise from yonder watery waste
To cheer me for a time.

For I was reared among the hills,

Within a Border home,

Where, brawling down their narrow glens,
The mountain torrents come;

And well I know the bonny braes
Where the first primrose blows,
And shrinking tufts of violets
Rise from the melting snows,
Ere yet the hazel leaf is out,
Or birches show their green,
Or on the sad and sullen ash
A kindling bud is seen.
O Hermitage, by Liddel's side,
My old ancestral tower!
Were I again but lord of thee-
Not owning half the power
That in my days of reckless pride
I held, but cast away—

I would not leave thee, Border keep,
Until my dying day!

SONNET TO BRITAIN, BY THE D

of w

Halt! Shoulder arms! Recover! As you were!
Right wheel! Eyes left! Attention! Stand at ease!
O Britain! O my country! words like these

Have made thy name a terror and a fear
To all the nations. Witness Ebro's banks,

Assaye, Toulouse, Nivelle, and Waterloo,

Where the grim despot mutter'd-sauve qui peut!
And they fled darkling.-Silence in the ranks;
Inspired by these, amidst the iron crash
Of armies, in the centre of his troop

The soldier stands-unmovable, not rash-
Until the forces of the foeman droop;

Then knocks the Frenchman to eternal smash,
Pounding them into mummy.

Shoulder, hoop!

Bon Gaultier's Ballads.

OLD MEMORIES.

535

ALEXANDER SMITH.

(1830-1867.)

In 1853 appeared "The Life Drama," by Alexander Smith, a selftaught poet, a native of Kilmarnock. Though very unequal in execution, and abounding in instances of crude and immature taste, this work had also proofs of rich imagination and poetical feeling. In 1857, Mr. Smith published a second volume, entitled " City poems," which sustained but did not increase his reputation. In 1861, Mr. Smith published a narrative poem in blank verse, "Edwin of Deira," which is unquestionably his best work. He was also the author of several prose works of considerable merit. From 1854 he held the office of Secretary to the University of Edinburgh.

OLD MEMORIES.

My head is grey, my blood is young,
Red-leaping in my veins,

The spring doth stir my spirit yet

To seek the cloistered violet,

The primrose in the lanes.

In heart I am a very boy,

Haunting the woods, the waterfalls,
The ivies on grey castle-walls;
Weeping in silent joy

When the broad sun goes down the west,

Or trembling o'er a sparrow's nest.
The world might laugh were I to tell
What most my old age cheers,-
Mem'ries of stars and crescent moons,
Of nutting strolls through autumn noons,
Rainbows 'mong April's tears.

But chief, to live that hour again,

When first I stood on sea-beach old,

First heard the voice, first saw out-rolled

The glory of the main.

Many rich draughts hath Memory,

The Soul's cup-bearer, brought to me.

FROM THE LIFE DRAMA.

On balcony, all summer roofed with vines,
A lady half-reclined amid the light,

Golden and green, soft-showering through the leaves.
Silent she sat one-half the silent noon;

At last she sank luxurious in her couch,

Purple and golden-fringèd, like the sun's,

And stretched her white arms on the warmèd air,

As if to take some object wherewithal
To ease the empty aching of her heart.
"Oh, what a weariness of life is mine!"
The lady said, "soothing myself to sleep
With my own lute, floating about the lake,
To feed my swans, with nought to stir my blood,
Unless I scold my women thrice a day.
Unwrought yet in the tapestry of my life
And princely suitors kneeling evermore.
I, in my beauty, standing in the midst,
Touching them, careless, with most stately eyes.
Oh, I could love, methinks, with all my soul!
But I see nought to love; nought save some score
Of lisping, curl'd gallants, with words i' their mouths
Soft as their mother's milk. Oh, empty heart!
Oh, palace, rich and purple-chambered!
When will thy lord come home?”

All glad from grass to sun! Yet more I love
Than this, the shrinking day, that sometimes comes
In Winter's front,,so fair 'mong its dark peers,
It seems a straggler from the files of June,
Which in its wanderings had lost its wits,
And half its beauty; and when it returned,
Finding its old companions gone away,

It joined November's troop, then marching past;
And so the frail thing comes, and greets the world
With a thin crazy smile, then bursts in tears,
And all the while it holds within its hand

A few half-wither'd flowers.

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THIS lady is remarkable as a blind poetess-a circumstance in itself calculated to excite attention and interest, but many of her pieces are distinguished by true poetic feeling and beauty, and her literary acquirements have been achieved under great difficulties. Frances Brown is the daughter of an Irish village postmaster, county of Donegal. She lost her sight from small-pox at the age of eighteen months, and had to trust solely to memory and perseverance for her knowledge of nature and books. After writing in the Athenæum and other periodicals, Miss Brown, in 1844, published a volume of poems, which has been followed by a second volume, and by numerous contributions to literary journals. Sir Robert Peel, when in office, settled upon her a small pension of £20 a year. The blind poet, Dr. Thomas Blacklock [1721-1791], had advantages of education denied to Miss Brown, but he was unquestionably inferior as a poet.

THE POET'S PATH.

537

THE POET'S PATH.

THE poet's path of old, it passed by Grecian grove and hill; And through the wrecks of war and time we trace its splendour still;

For there the ancient temples rose, as at the thrilling call
Of that Egyptian wanderer's lyre arose the Theban wall.

And since o'er many a distant shore that starry path hath shone, For gleaming through the Polar night, it cheered the frozen zone; The old Crusaders saw it shine through realms of Eastern bloom, And the wanderers of the Western woods amid their leafy gloom.

But, like the ocean-doomed, who sought the happy isles of yore, The feet that seek that pleasant path may turn aside no more; For tuneful lips that once have quaffed the bright Castalian rill, Though never more they taste the wave, will wander by it still.

As he who traversed lands of old

the glorious and unknownReturned at last in age to be a stranger in his own; So hearts that early leave the dust, that upward path to share, Forgotten lose their hold of earth, and seem but strangers there.

But oh! what glorious visions shine, what lovely scenes arise, Around that mystic path, to win from earth the pilgrim's eyes! Though ever seen through thorny brakes, or wastes of trackless sand,

As Israel from the wilderness beheld his promised land.

Long, long, the early Muse hath left her own, her Grecian isles; And long the Runic harp is hushed among the Northern wilds; And o'er the poet's path a flood of time and tears hath swept ; But still 'tis all of Eden which our fallen world hath kept.

1 Marco Paolo.

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