And Freedom hallows with her tread
The silent cities of the dead;
For beautiful in death are they
Who proudly fall in her array;
And soon, oh Goddess! may we be
For evermore with them or thee!
I SPEAK not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name;
There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the fame :
But the tear which now burns on my cheek may impart
The deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of heart.
Too brief for our passion, too long for our peace,
Were those hours-can their joy or their bitterness cease?
We repent-we abjure-we shall break from our chain-
We will part-we will fly to-unite it again!
Oh! thine be the gladness, and mine be the guilt!
Forgive me, adored one !-forsake, if thou wilt;
But the heart which is thine shall expire undebased,
And man shall not break it-whatever thou mayst.
And stern to the haughty, but humble to thee,
This soul in its bitterest blackness shall be ;
And our days seem as swift, and our movements more sweet,
With thee by my side, than with worlds at my feet.
One sigh of thy sorrow, one look of thy love,
Shall turn me or fix, shall reward or reprove;
And the heatless may wonder at all I resign-
Thy lip shall reply, not to them, but to mine.
FILL the goblet again! for I never before
Felt the glow which now gladdens my heart to its core ;
Let us drink!-who would not?-since through life's varied
In the goblet alone no deception is found.
I have tried in its turn all that life can supply:
I have bask'd in the beam of a dark rolling eye;
I have loved!-who has not ?-but what heart can declare, That pleasure existed while passion was there?
In the days of my youth, when the heart 's in its spring,
And dreams that affection can never take wing,
I had friends!-who has not ?-but what tongue will avow
That friends, rosy wine! are so faithful as thou?
The heart of a mistress some boy may estrange,
Friendship shifts with the sunbeam-thou never canst change:
Thou grow'st old-who does not ?-but on earth what appears,
Whose virtues, like thine, still increase with its years
Yet if blest to the utmost that love can bestow,
Should a rival bow down to our idol below,
We are jealous !-who's not ?-thou hast no such alloy;
For the more that enjoy thee, the more we enjoy.
Then the season of youth and its vanities past,
For refuge we fly to the goblet at last;
There we find-do we not?-in the flow of the soul,
That truth, as of yore, is confined to the bowl.
When the box of Pandora was open'd on earth,
And Misery's triumph commenced over Mirth,
Hope was left.- -was she not?-but the goblet we kiss,
And care not for Hope, who are certain of bliss.
Long life to the grape! for when summer is flown,
The age of our nectar shall gladden our own:
We must die-who shall not?-May our sins be forgiven,
And Hebe shall never be idle in heaven.
INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SPOKEN AT THE CALEDONIAN
MEETING, 1814.
WHO hath not glow'd above the page where fame
Hath fix'd high Caledon's unconquer'd name;
The mountain land which spurn'd the Roman chain,
And baffled back the fiery-crested Dane;
Whose bright claymore and hardihood of hand,
No foe could tame-no tyrant could command!
That race is gone-but still their children breathe,
And glory crowns them with redoubled wreath :
O'er Gael and Saxon mingling banners shine,
And, England! add their stubborn strength to thine.
The blood which flow'd with Wallace flows as free,
But now 'tis only shed for fame and thee!
Oh! pass not by the northern veteran's claim,
But give support-the world hath given him fame!
The humbler ranks, the lowly brave, who bled
While cheerly following where the mighty led-
Who sleep beneath the undistinguish'd sod,
Where happier comrades in their triumph trod,
To us bequeath-'tis all their fate allows-
The sireless offspring and the lonely spouse:
She on high Albyn's dusky hills may raise
The tearful eye in melancholy gaze;
Or view, while shadowy auguries disclose,
The Highland seer's anticipated woes,
The bleeding phantom of each martial form,
Dim in the cloud, or darkling in the storm;
While sad she chants the solitary song,
The soft lament for him who tarries long-
For him, whose distant relics vainly crave
The cronach's wild requiem to the brave!
"Tis Heaven-not man-must charm away the woe,
Which bursts when Nature's feelings newly flow;
Yet tenderness and time may rob the tear
Of half its bitterness, for one so dear;
A nation's gratitude perchance may spread
A thornless pillow for the widow's head;
May lighten well her heart's maternal care,
And wean from penury the soldier's heir.
THE serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain,+
And Slavery half forgets her feudal chain;
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord-
The long self-exiled chieftain is restored :
There be bright faces in the busy hall,
Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall;
Far chequering o'er the pictured window, plays
The unwonted fagots' hospitable blaze;
And gay retainers gather round the hearth,
With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth.
The chief of Lara is return'd again:
And why had Lara cross'd the bounding main?
Left by his sire, too young such loss to know,
Lord of himself;-that heritage of woe,
That fearful empire which the human breast
But holds to rob the heart within of rest!-
With none to check, and few to point in time
The thousand paths that slope the way to crime;
Then, when he most required commandment, then
Had Lara's daring boyhood govern❜d men.
It skills not, boots not, step by step to trace
His youth through all the mazes of its race;
Short was the course his restlessness had run,
But long enough to leave him half undone.
And Lara left in youth his father-land;
But from the hour he waved his parting hand
Each trace wax'd fainter of his course, till all
Had nearly ceased his memory to recall.
His sire was dust, his vassals could declare-
'Twas all they knew, that Lara was not there;
This tale is evidently a continuation of the "Corsair," not too much being, left for the imagination of any reader to follow the events and mark the coincidence of characters.
The reader is apprised that the name of Lara being Spanish, and no circumstance of local or national description fixing the scene or hero of the poem to any country or age, the word "Serf," which could not be correctly applied to the lower classes in Spain, who were never vassals of the soil, has, nevertheless, been employed to designate the followers of our fictitious chieftain. He is meant for noble of the Mcrea.-B.
Nor sent, nor came he, till conjecture grew
Cold in the many, anxious in the few.
His hall scarce echoes with his wonted name,
His portrait darkens in its fading frame,
Another chief consoled his destined bride,
The young forgot him, and the old had died;
"Yet doth he live!" exclaims the impatient heir,
And sighs for sables which he must not wear.
A hundred scutcheons deck with gloomy grace
The Laras' last and longest dwelling-place;
But one is absent from the mouldering file,
That now were welcome in that Gothic pile.
He comes at last in sudden loneliness,
And whence they know not, why they need not guess; They more might marvel, when the greeting 's o'er, Not that he came, but came not long before :
No train is his beyond a single page,
Of foreign aspect, and of tender age.
Years had roll'd on, and fast they sped away
To those that wander as to those that stay;
But lack of tidings from another clime
Had lent a flagging wing to weary Time.
They see, they recognize, yet almost deem
The present dubious, or the past a dream.
He lives, nor yet is past his manhood's prime,
Though sear'd by toil, and something touch'd by time;
His faults, whate'er they were, if scarce forgot,
Might be untaught him by his varied lot;
Nor good nor ill of late were known, his name
Might yet uphold his patrimonial fame.
His soul in youth was haughty, but his sins
No more than pleasure from the stripling wins
And such, if not yet harden'd in their course,
Might be redeem'd, nor ask a long remorse.
And they indeed were changed-'tis quickly seen,
Whate'er he be, 'twas not what he had been :
That brow in furrow'd lines had fix'd at last,
And spake of passions, but of passion past;
The pride, but not the fire, of early days,
Coldness of mien, and carelessness of praise;
A high demeanour, and a glance that took
Their thoughts from others by a single look;
And that sarcastic levity of tongue,
The stinging of a heart the world hath stung,
That darts in seeming playfulness around,
And makes those feel that will not own the wound;
All these seem'd his, and something more beneath
Than glance could well reveal, or accent breathe.
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