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SIR WALTER SCOTT.

1771-1832.

["Albyn's Anthology." 1816.]

NORA'S VOW.

HEAR What Highland Nora said,
"The Earlie's son I will not wed,
Should all the race of nature die,
And none be left but he and I.
For all the gold, for all the gear,
And all the lands both far and near,
That ever valour lost or won,

I would not wed the Earlie's son."

"A maiden's vows," old Callum spoke,
"Are lightly made, and lightly broke;
The heather on the mountain's height
Begins to bloom in purple light;
The frost-wind soon shall sweep away
That lustre deep from glen and brae;
Yet Nora, ere its bloom be gone,
May blithely wed the Earlie's son."

"The swan," she said, "the lake's clear breast May barter for the eagle's nest;

The Awe's fierce stream may backward turn, Ben-Cruaichan fall, and crush Kilchurn;

Our kilted clans, when blood is high,
Before their foes may turn and fly;
But I, were all these marvels done,
Would never wed the Earlie's son."

Still in the water-lily's shade

Her wonted nest the wild-swan made;
Ben-Cruaichan stands fast as ever,

Still downward foams the Awe's fierce river;
To shun the clash of foeman's steel,

No highland brogue has turned the heel;
But Nora's heart is lost and won,

She's wedded to the Earlie's son!

["The Betrothed." 1825.]

SONG.

Woman's faith, and woman's trust,
Write the characters in dust;

Stamp them on the running stream,
Print them on the moon's pale beam,

And each evanescent letter,

Shall be clearer, firmer, better,

And more permanent, I ween,

Than the things those letters mean.

I have strained the spider's thread 'Gainst the promise of a maid;

I have weighed a grain of sand

'Gainst her plight of heart and hand;

I told my true love of the token,

How her faith proved light, and her word was broken;

Again her word and truth she plight,

And I believed them again ere night.

LEIGH HUNT.

1784-1859.

TO MY WIFE-ON MODELLING MY BUST.

Ан, Marian mine, the face you look on now
Is not exactly like my wedding day's:
Sunk is its cheek, deeper-retired its gaze,
Less white and smooth it's temple-flattened brow.
Sorrow has been there with his silent plough,
And straight, stern hand. No matter, if it raise
Aught that affection fancies, it may praise,
Or make me worthier of Apollo's bough.
Loss, after all, such loss especially,
Is transfer, change, but not extinction, no;
Part in our children's apple cheeks I see;
And, for the rest, while you look at me so,
Take care you do not smile it back to me,
And miss the copied furrows as you go.

JENNY kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in:

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,

Say that health and wealth have missed me,

Say I'm growing old, but add,

Jenny kissed me.

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THE last two or three years of the life of Keats were embittered by a hopeless passion. Not that it was not returned, for we are assured it was, but that his circumstances at first, and afterwards his fatal illness, forbade him to think of marriage. The lady of his love is still living, or was in 1848, when Monckton Milnes edited his 66 REMAINS," ," but her name is withheld from the world. Nothing is known of her, here in America, at least, beyond what Keats himself tells us. He met her in the autumn of 1818, shortly after his return from a tour in the Highlands, and probably at Hampstead, whither he retired with his brother Tom, who was dying with consumption. The earliest mention of her in his correspondence is in a letter to his brother George, in America, dated on the 29th of October, 1818. "The Misses," he wrote, are very kind to me, but they have lately displeased me very much, and in this way: now I am coming the Richardson! On my return, the first day I called, they were in a sort of taking or bustle about a cousin of theirs, who, having fallen out with her grandpapa in a serious manner, was invited by Mrs. to take asylum in her house. She is an

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East Indian, and ought to be her grandfather's heir. At the time I called, Mrs. in conference with her upstairs, and the young ladies were warm in her praise downstairs, calling her genteel, interesting, and a thousand pretty things, to which I gave no heed, not being partial to nine days' wonders. Now all is completely changed: they hate her, and, from what I hear, she is not without faults of a real kind; but she has others, which are more apt to make women of inferior claims hate her. She is not a Cleopatra, but is, at least, a Charmian: she has a rich Eastern look; she has fine eyes, and fine manners. When she comes into the room, she makes the same impression as the beauty of a leopardess. She is too fine, and too conscious of herself, to repulse any man who may address her: from habit she thinks that nothing particular. I always find myself at ease with such a woman: the picture before me always gives me a life and animation which I cannot possibly feel with anything inferior. I am, at such times, too much occupied in admiring to be awkward or in a tremble: I forget myself entirely, because I live in her. You will, by this time, think I am in love with her, so, before I go any further, I will tell you I am not. She kept me awake one night, as

a tune of Mozart's might do. I speak of the thing as a pastime and an amusement, than which I can feel none deeper than a conversation with an imperial woman, the very 'Yes' and 'No' of whose life is to me a banquet. I don't cry to take the moon home with me in my pocket, nor do I fret to leave her behind me. I like her, and her like, because one has no sensation: what we both are is taken for granted. You will suppose I have, by this, had much talk with her-no such thing; there are the Misses on the lookout. They think I don't admire her because I don't stare at her; they call her a flirt to me-what a want of knowledge! She walks across a room in such a manner, that a man is drawn towards her with magnetic power; this they call flirting! They do not know things; they do not know what a woman is. I believe, though, she has faults, the same as Charmian and Cleopatra might have had." If Keats was not in love when he drew this magnificent portrait, he was certainly on the highway to it, as any person of penetration could have seen. Perhaps he saw it himself, and was struggling to overcome it, knowing it could not lead to his happiness. Be this as it may, the time soon came when he knew that he loved, and a terrible knowledge it was-to a dying man! "Seeing him once change countenance," says Hunt, “in a manner more alarming than usual, as he stood silently eying the country out of window, I pressed him to let me know how he felt, in order that he might enable me to do what I could for him; upon which he said, that his feelings were almost more than he could bear, and that he feared for his senses. I proposed that we should take a coach, and ride about the country together, to vary, if possible, the immediate impression, which was sometimes all that was formidable, and would come to nothing. He acquiesced, and was restored to himself. It was, nevertheless, on the same day, that sitting on the bench in Well Walk, at Hampstead, nearest the Heath, that he told me, with unaccustomed tears in his eyes, that his heart was breaking.' A doubt, however, was upon him at that time, which he afterwards had reason to know was groundless; and during his residence at the last house which he occupied before he went abroad, he was at times more than tranquil. At length, he was persuaded by his friends to try the milder climate of Italy." He started from England in September, 1820, in company with Severn, the artist, and arrived at Naples in the latter part of October. On the 1st of November he wrote thus to his friend, Charles Armitage Brown: "The persuasion that I shall see her no more will kill me. My dear Brown, I should have had her when I was in health, and I should have remained well. I can bear to die-I cannot bear to leave her. Oh, God! God! God! Everything I have in my trunks that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear. The silk lining she put in my travelling cap scalds my head. My imagination is horribly vivid about her-I see herI hear her. There is nothing in the world of sufficient interest to divert me from her a moment. This was the case when I was in England; I cannot recollect, without shuddering, the time that I was a prisoner at Hunt's, and used to keep my eyes fixed on Hampstead all day. Then there was a good hope of seeing her again. Now-O that I could be buried near where she lives! I am afraid to write to her to receive a letter from her; to see her handwriting would break my heart-even to hear of her anyhow, to see her name written, would be more than I could bear. My dear Brown, what am I to do? Where can I look for consolation or ease? If I had any chance of

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