Outspoke the hardy Highland-wight: (Her bright-haired sire, who bade her keep I'll go, my chief-I'm ready :

For ever nearest to his smiles, It is not for your silver bright,

On Calpe's olive-shaded steep, But for your winsome lady:

On India's citron-covered isles)

More remote and buxom-brown, And, by my word! the bonny bird The Queen of Vintage bowed before his In danger shall not tarry;

throne; So, though the waves are wraging white, A rich pomegranate gemmed her crown, I'll row you o'er the ferry.

A ripe sheaf bound her zone.
By this the storm grew loud apace;
The water-wraith was shrieking ;

But howling Winter fled afar
And in the scowl of heaven each face

To hills that prop the polar-star; Grew dark as they were speaking. And loves on deer-borne car to ride,

With barren darkness by his side; But still, as wilder blew the wind,

Round the shore where loud Lofoden And as the night grew drearer,

Whirls to death the roaring whale; Adown the glen rode armed men;

Round the hall where runic Odin Their trampling sounded nearer.

Howls his war-song to the gale;

Save when adown the ravag'd globe 0 haste thee, haste! the lady cries,

le travels on his native storm, Though tempests round us gather;

Deflowering Nature's grassy robe, I'll meet the raging of the skies,

And trampling on her faded form: But not an angry father.

Till light's returning lord assume

The shast that drives him to his polar-field, The boat has left a stormy land,

Of power to pierce his raven plume A stormy sea before her,

And crystal-covered shield.
When, oh! too strong for human hand,

The tempest gathered o'er her.
And still they rowed amidst the roar

O Sire of Storms! whose savage ear
Of waters fast prevailing :

The Lapland-drum delights to hear, Lord Ullin reached that fatal shore: When Frenzy with her blood-shot eye His wrath was changed to wailing.

Implores thy dreadful deity:

Archangel! power of desolation! For sore dismayed, through storm and shade, Fast descending as thou art, His child he did discover:

Say, hath mortal invocation One lovely hand she stretched for aid,

Spells to touch thy stony heart? And one was round her lover.

Then, sullen Winter, hear my prayer,

And gently rule the ruined year; Come back! come back! he cried in grief,

Nor chill the wanderer's bosom bare, Across this stormy water;

Nor freeze the wretch’s falling tear; And I'll forgive your Highland-chief.

To shuddering want's unmantled bed My daughter!-oh my daughter!

Thy horror-breathing agues cease to lend;

And gently on the orphan-head 'Twas vain: the loud waves lashed the shore, of innocence descend.

Return or aid preventing :
The waters wild went o’er his child,
And he was left lamenting.

But chiefly spare, oh King of Clouds!
The sailor on his airy shrouds;
When wrecks and beacons strew the steep,
And spectres walk along the deep.
Wilder yet thy snowy breezes

Pour on yonder tented shores,
ODE TO WINTER.

Where the Rhine's broad billow freezes,

Or the dark-brown Danube roars. 1800.

Oh winds of winter! list ye there

To many a deep and dying groan; WABN first the fiery-mantled Sun

Or start ye, demons of the midnight-air,

At shrieks and thunders louder than your His heavenly race began to run,

own? Round the earth and ocean blue His children four the Seasons flew.

Alas! e'en your unhallowed breath First, in green apparel dancing,

May spare the victim, fallen low;

But man will ask no truce to death,
The young Spring smiled with angel-grace;

No bounds to human woe.
Rosy Summer next advancing,
Rushed into her sire's embrace;

dead;

LINES ON THE GRAVE OF A SUICIDE. Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal

and bright, By strangers left upon a lonely shore, In the days of delusion by fancy combin'd Unknown, unhonoured, was the friendless With the vanishing phantoms of love and

delight, For child to weep, or widow to deplore, Abandon my soul, like a dream of the night, There never came to his unburied head And leave but a desert behind. All from his dreary habitation fled. Nor will the lantern'd fisherman at eve Launch on that water by the witches' tower, Be hush'd, my dark spirit! for wisdom conWhere hellebore and hemlock seem to weave

demns Round its dark vaults a melancholy bower, When the faint and the feeble deplore; For spirits of the dead at night's enchanted Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems

hour.

A thousand wild waves on the shore ! Through the perils of chance and the scowl

of disdain, They dread to meet thee, poor unfortunate!

May thy front be unalter'd, thy courage Whose crime it was, on life's unfinished road,

elate! To feel the stepdame-buffetings of fate,

Yea! even the name I have worshipp'd in And render back thy being's heavy load.

vain Ah! once, perhaps, the social passions glowed Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance In thy devoted bosom--and the hand That emote its kindred heart might yet be

again:To bear is to conquer our fate.

prone To deeds of mercy. Who may understand Thy many woes, poor suicide, unknown? He who thy being gave shall judge of thee alone.

O'CONNOR'S CHILD,

OR TRB FLOWER OF LOVE LIES BLEEDING.

WRITTEN ON VISITING A SCENE IN ARGYLESHIRE.

L I N E S

On! once the harp of Innisfail

Was strung full high to notes of gladness;

But yet it often told a tale At the silence of twilight's contemplative Of more prevailing sadness.

hour,

Sad was the note, and wild its fall, I have mus'd in a sorrowful mood

As winds that moan at night forlorn On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom the Along the isles of Fion-Gall,

bower,

When, for O'Connor's child to mourn,
Where the home of my forefathers stood. The harper told, how lone, how far
All ruin'd and wild is their roofless abode, From any mansion's twinkling star,

And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree; From any path of social men,
And travell’d by few is the grass-cover'd road, Or voice, but from the fox's den,
Where the hunter of deer and the warrior The lady in the desert dwelt;

trode

And yet no wrongs, no fear she felt;
To his hills that encircle the sea.

Say, why should dwell in place so wild
O'Connor's pale and lovely child?

Yet wandering I found on my ruinous walk,

By the dial-stone aged and green, Sweet lady! she no more inspires One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk, Green Erin's hearts with beauty's power,

To mark where a garden had been. As, in the palace of her sires, Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race, She bloomed a peerless flower.

All wild in the silence of nature, it drew Gone from her hand and bosom, gone, From each wandering sun-beam a lonely The royal broche, the jewelled ring,

embrace;

That o'er her dazzling whiteness shone, For the night-weed and thorn overshadow'd Like dews on lilies of the spring.

the place

Yet why, though fall’n her brother's kerne Where the flower of my forefathers grew. Beneath De Bourgo's battle stern,

While yet in Leinster unexplored

Her friends survive the English sword; Sweet bud of the wilderness! emblem of all Why lingere she from Erin's host

That remains in this desolate heart! So far on Galway's shipwrecked coast? The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall, Why wanders she a huntress wild, But patience shall never depart!

O'Connor's pale and lovely child ?

And fix'd on empty space, why burn Their tribe, they said, their high degree,

Her eyes with inomentary wildness; Was sung in Tara's psaltery;. And wherefore do they then return

Witness their Eath's victorious brand, To more than woman's mildness?

And Cathal of the bloody hand: Dishevellid are her raven-locks;

Glory (they said) and power and honour On Connocht Moran's name she calls; Were in the mansion of O'Conuor; And oft amidst the lonely rocks

But he, my loved one, bore in field
She sings sweet madrigals.

A meaner crest upon his shield.
Plac'd in the foxglove and the moss,
Behold a parted warrior's cross!
That is the spot where, evermore,

Ah, brothers! what did it avail
The lady, at her shieling door,

That fiercely and triumphantly Enjoys that, in communion sweet,

Ye fought the English of the pale, The living and the dead can meet :

And stemmed De Bourgo's chivalry ? For, lo! to love-lorn fantasy,

And what was it to love and me The hero of her heart is nigh.

That barons by your standard rode, Or beal-fires for your jubilee

Upon an hundred mnountains glowed ? Bright as the bow that spans the storm, What though the lords of tower and dome, In Erin's yellow vesture clad,

From Shannon to the North-sea-foam, A son of light--a lovely form,

Thought ye your iron hands of pride He comes and makes her glad:

Could break the knot that love had tied ? Now on the grass-green turf he sits, No:- let the eagle change his plume,

His tassel'd horn beside hin laid ; The leaf its huc, the flower its bloom ; Now o'er the hills in chase he flits, But ties around this heart were spun

The hunter and the deer a shade! That could not, would not, be undone! Sweet mourner! those are shadows vain That cross the twilight of her brain; Yet she will tell you she is blest,

At bleating of the wild watch-fold Of Connocht Moran's tomb possessed, Thus sang my love—“Oh, come with me: More richly than in Aghrim's bower, Our bark is on the lake, behold When bards high praised her beauty's power, Our steeds are fastend to the tree. And kneeling pages offer'd up

Come far from Castle-Connor's clans-
The morat in a golden cup.

Come with thy belted forestere,
And I, beside the lake of swans,

Shall hunt for thee the fallow-deer;
A hero's bride! this desert bower, And build thy hut, and bring thee home
It ill befits thy gentle breeding :

The wild-fowl and the honey-comb;
And wherefore dost thou love this flower And berries from the wood provide,

To call--My love lies bleeding ? And play my clarshech by thy side.
This purple flower my tears have nursed; Then come, my love!"- How could I stay?

A hero's blood supplied its bloom : Our nimble stag-hounds tracked the way, I love it, for it was the first

And I pursued, by moonless skies,
That grew on Connocht Moran's tomb. The light of Connocht Moran's eyes.
Oh! hearken, stranger, to my voice !
This desert mansion is my choice!
And blest, though fatal, be the star And fast and far, before the star
That led me to its wilds afar:

Of day-spring rushed we through the glade,
For here these pathless mountains free And saw at dawn the lofty bawn
Gave shelter to my love and me;

Of Castle-Connor fade! And every rock and every stone

Sweet was to us the hermitage Bare witness that he was my own.

of this unplough’d, antrodden shore ; Like birds all joyous from the cage,

For man's neglect we loved it more. O'Connor's child, I was the bud

And well he knew, my huntsman dear, Of Erin's royal tree of glory;

To search the game with hawk and spear; But woe to them that wrapt in blood While I, his evening-food to dress, The tissue of my story!

Would sing to him in happiness. Still as I clasp my burning brain, But, oh, that midnight of despair!

A death-scene rushes on my sight; When I was doom'd to rend my hair: It rises o'er and o'er again,

The night, to me, of shrieking sorrow ! The bloody feud--the fatal night, The night, to him, that had no morrow! When, chafing Connocht Moran's scorn, They call'd my hero basely born, And bade him choose a meaner bride When all was hushed, at even-tide, Than from O'Connor's house of pride. I heard the baying of their beagle:

Be hushed ! my Connocht Moran cried, O stranger! by my country's loss !

'Tis but the screaming of the eagle. And by my love! and by the cross ! Alas! 'twas not the eyrie's sound;

I swear I never could have spoke Their bloody bands had track'd us out; The curse that severed nature's yoke, Up listening starts our couchant hound- But that a spirit o'er me stood,

And, hark! again, that nearer shout And fired me with the wrathful mood;
Brings faster on the murderers.

And frenzy to my heart was given,
Spare, spare him—Brazil - Desmond fierce! To speak the malison of heaven.
In vain—no voice the adder charms;
Their weapons crossed my sheltering arms :
Another's sword has laid him low-

They would have cross'd themselves, all
Another's and another's ;

mute; And every hand that dealt the blow

They would have pray'd to burst the spell; Ah me! it was a brother's !

But, at the stamping of my foot,
Yes, when his moanings died away,

Each hand down pow'rless fell!
Their iron bands had dug the clay, And go to Athunree! (I cried)
And o'er his burial-turf they trod, High lift the banner of your pride!
And I beheld-oh God! oh God!

But know that where its sheet unrolls
His life-blood oozing from the sod !

The weight of blood is on your souls!

Go where the havoc of your kerne Warm in his death-wounds sepulchred,

Shall float as high as mountain-fern ! Alas! my warrior's spirit brave,

Men shall no more your mansion know; Nor mass nor ulla-lulla heard

The nettles on your hearth shall grow! Lamenting soothe his grave.

Dead, as the green oblivious flood Dragged to their hated mansion back,

That mantles by your walls, shall be How long in thraldom's grasp I lay

The glory of O'Connor's blood! I knew not, for my soul was black,

Away! away to Athunree! And knew no change of night or day.

Where, downward when the sun shall fall, One night of horror round me grew;

The raven's wing shall be your pall! Or if I saw, or felt, or knew,

And not a vassal shall unlace 'Twas but when those grim visages,

The vizor from your dying face!
The angry brothers of my race,
Glared on each eye-ball's aching throb,
And check'd my bosom's power to sob; A bolt that overhung our dome,
Or when my heart with pulses drear Suspended till my curse was given,
Beat like a death-watch to my ear. Soon as it pass'd these lips of foam,

Pealed in the blood-red heaven.

Dire was the look that o'er their backs
But Heaven, at last, my soul's eclipse
Did with a vision bright inspire:

The angry parting brothers threw :

But now, behold! like cataracts, I woke, and felt upon my lips

Come down the hills in view A prophetess's fire.

O'Connor's plumed partizans ; Thrice in the east a war-drum beat,

Thrice ten Kilnagorvian clans I heard the Saxon's trumpet sound,

Were marching to their doom :
And ranged, as to the judgment-seat,

A sudden storm their plumage tossed,
My guilty, trembling brothers round.
Clad in the helm and shield they came;

A fiash of lightning o'er them crossed,

And all again was gloom!
For now De Bourgo's sword and flame
Had ravaged Ulster's boundaries,
And lighted up the midnight-skies.
That standard of O'Connor's sway

Stranger! I fled the home of grief,
Was in the turret where I lay;

At Connocht Moran's tomb to fall; That standard, with so dire a look,

I found the helmet of my chief, As ghastly shone the moon and pale,

His bow still hanging on our wall, I gave, that every bosom shook

And took it down, and vowed to rove
Beneath its iron mail.

This desert place a huntress bold;
Nor would I change my buried love

For any heart of living mould.
And go! (I cried) the combat seek, No! for í am a hero's child,
Ye hearts that unappalled bore

I'll hunt my quarry in the wild;
The anguish of a sister's shriek;

And still my home this mansion make, Go and return no more!

Of all unheeded and unheeding, For sooner guilt the ordeal-brand

And cherish, for my warrior's sake, Shall grasp unhurt, than ye shall hold The flower of love lies bleeding. The banner with victorious hand,

Beneath a sister's curse unrolld.

! TO THE MEMORY OF BURNS.

O DE

O deem not, 'midst this worldly strife,
An idle art the Poet brings;
Let high Philosophy control,

And sages calm, the stream of life;
Soul of the Poet! wheresoe'er,

'Tis he refines its fountain-springs,
Reclaim'd from earth, thy genius plume The nobler passions of the soul.
Her wings of immortality;
Suspend thy harp in happier sphere, It is the muse that consecrates
And with thine influence illume

The native banner of the brave,
The gladness of our jubilee.

Unfurling at the trumpet's breath

Rose, thistle, harp ; 'tis she elates And fly, like fiends from secret spell, To sweep the field or ride the wave, Discord and strife at Burns's name,

A sunburst in the storm of death. Exorcis'd by his memory; For he was chief of bards that swell And thou, young hero, when thy pall The heart with songs of social flame Is cross'd with mournful sword and plume; And high delicious revelry.

When public grief begins to fade,

And only tears of kindred fall; And love's own strain to him was given, Who but the bard shall dress thy tomb, To warble all its ecstasies

And greet with fame thy gallant shade? With Pythian words unsought, unwillid, Love, the surviving gift of Heaven, Such was the soldier-Burns, forgive The choicest sweet of Paradise,

That sorrows of mine own intrude In life's else bitter cup distillid.

In strains to thy great memory due.

In verse like thine, oh! could he live, Who that has melted o'er his lay

The friend I mourned—the brave, the goodTo Mary's soul in Heaven above,

Edward that died at Waterloo ! But pictured sees, in fancy strong, The landscape and the livelong day Farewell, high chief of Scottish song! That smiled upon their mutual love- That couldst alternately impart Who that has felt forgets the song ? Wisdom and rapture in thy page,

And brand each vice with satire strong ; Nor skill'd one flame alone to fan:

Whose lines are mottoes of the heart, His country's high-sould peasantry Whose truths electrify the sage. What patriot-pride he taught!-how much To weigh the inborn worth of man! Farewell ! and ne'er may Envy dare And rustic life and poverty

To wring one baleful poison'd drop Grow beautiful beneath his touch. From the crush'd laurels of thy bust;

But while the lark sings sweet in air,
Him, in his clay-built cot, the muse Still may the grateful pilgrim stop,
Entranced, and showed him all the forms To bless the spot that holds thy dust.
Of fairy-light and wizard-gloom,
(That only gifted poet views)
The genii of the floods and storms,
And martial shade from glory's tomb.

TO THE RAINBOW.
On Bannock-field what thoughts arouse
The swain whom Burns's song inspires? TRIUMPHAL arch, that fillst the sky
Beat not his Caledonian veins,

When storms prepare to part,
As o’er the heroic turf he ploughs, I ask not proud philosophy
With all the spirit of his sires,

To teach me what thou art. And all their scorn of death and chains ?

Still seem as to my childhood's sight, And see the Scottish exile, tann'd

A midway-station given
By many a far and foreign clime,

For happy spirits to alight
Bend o'er his home-born verse, and weep Betwixt the earth and heaven.
In memory of his native land,
With love that scorns the lapse of time, Can all that optics teach, unfold
And ties that stretch beyond the deep. Thy form to please me so,

As when I dreamt of gems and gold
Encamped by Indian rivers wild,

Hid in thy radiant bow?
The soldier, resting on his arms,
In Burns's carol sweet recals

When Science from Creation's face
The scenes that blest him when a child, Enchantment's veil withdraws,
And glows and gladdens at the charms What lovely visions yield their place
Of Scotia's woods and waterfalls.

To cold material laws!