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He who had died a ruin'd world to bless,
And now, victorious over all his foes,
Before his hosts of saints triumphant goes,
Entering his rest of heavenly holiness. Morehea

SABBATH BELL.

THE first note of the holy bell recalls
The hours of childhood, when its early stroke,
From neighbouring village, every cottage woke
To preparation,-farm-stead,-lordly halls.
Upon mine ear like voice of love it falls
Maternal, as if from the grave it broke,
Restoring sounds, which earth may not revoke,
Where all was kindness, no word that appals!
What have since been doing? Sabbath bell
To Sabbath bell has peal'd continued chime
Of echoing repetition, from the first

That smote my infant thought :—and can I tell
That, in this land of Christian promise, time

Hath pass'd with me, like those for life who thirst?

Morehead.

NATURE'S CHARMS.

OH! how canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms, which Nature to her votary yields!
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,
And all that echoes to the song of even,
All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields,
And all the dread magnificence of Heaven,-

Oh! how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven.

Beattie.

To sit on rocks; to muse o'er flood and fell;
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,

Where things, that own not man's dominion, dwell,

And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock, that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps, and foaming falls to lean ;-
This is not solitude: 'tis but to hold

Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll❜d.

Byron.

THE HEAVENS.

the sky;

I GAZE upon yon orbs of light,
The countless stars that gem
Each in its sphere serenely bright,
Wheeling its course how silently!
While, in the mantle of the night,
Earth and its cares and troubles lie.

Temple of light and loveliness,
And throne of grandeur! can it be
That souls whose kindred loftiness
Nature hath framed to rise to thee,
Should pine within this narrow place,
This prison of mortality?

What madness, from the path of right,
For ever leads our steps astray,
That, reckless. of thy pure delight,
We turn from this divine array,
To chase a shade that mocks the sight,-
A good that vanisheth away?

Awake, ye mortals, raise your eyes
To yon eternal starry spheres-
Look on these glories of the skies!
Then answer how this world appears,
With all its pomps and vanities,
With all its hopes and all its fears.

What but a speck of earth, at last,
Amidst the illimitable sky,
A point, that sparkles in the vast
Effulgence of her galaxy;

In whose mysterious rounds, the past,
The present, and the future lie?

Who can look forth upon the blaze
Of heavenly hope so brightly shining,
Through the unbounded void of space
A hand unseen their course assigning,
All moving with unequal pace,
Yet in harmonious concord joining :
Who, that has seen these splendours roll,
And gazed on this majestic scene,
But sigh'd to 'scape the world's control,
Spurning its pleasures poor and mean,
To burst the bonds that bind the soul,
And pass the gulf that yawns between?
Anonymous Translation from the Spanish.

LANDSCAPE.

EVER charming, ever new,

When will the landscape tire the view?
The fountain's fall; the river's flow;
The woody valleys, warm and low;
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky!

The pleasant seat; the ruin'd tower;
The naked rock; the shady bower;
The town and village, dome and farm,
Each gives each a double charm,
As pearls upon an Ethiop's arm.
Now, even now, my joys run high,
As on the mountain's turf I lie,
While the wanton Zephyr sings,
And in the vale perfumes his wings;
While the waters murmur deep;
While the shepherd charms his sheep;
While the birds unbounded fly,

And with music fill the sky,

Now, even now, my joys run high. Dyer.

VIEW FROM BLACKFORD HILL.

WHEN sated with the martial show
That peopled all the plain below,

The wandering eye could o'er it go,
And mark the distant city glow
With gloomy splendour red;

For, on the smoke-wreaths huge and low,
That round her sable turrets flow,

The morning beams were shed,

And tinged them with a lustre proud,
Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud.
Such dusky grandeur clothed the height,
Where the huge castle holds its state,
And all the steep slope down,

Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Piled deep and massy, close and high,-
MINE OWN romantic town!

But northward far with purer blaze,
On Ochil mountains fell the rays,
And, as each heathy top they kiss'd,
It gleam'd a purple amethyst.
Yonder the shores of Fife you saw:
Here Preston-bay, and Berwick-law;
And, broad between them, roll'd
The gallant Firth the eye might note,
Whose Islands on its bosom float,
Like emeralds chased in gold.

Scott.

ANCIENT AND MODERN EDINBURGH.

TRUE,-Caledonia's Queen is changed,
Since, on her dusky summit ranged,
Within its steepy limits pent,
By bulwark, line, and battlement,
And flanking towers, and laky flood,
Guarded and garrison'd she stood;
Denying entrance or resort,
Save at each tall embattled port:
Above whose arch suspended hung
Portcullis, spiked with iron prong.
That long is gone, but not so long
Since, early closed and opening late,
Jealous revolved the studded gate

Whose task from eve to morning tide,
A wicket churlishly supplied.

Stern then and steel-girt was thy brow,
Dun-Edin! Oh how alter'd now,
When, safe amid thy mountain-court,
Thou sit'st, like Empress at her sport,
And liberal, unconfined and free,
Flinging thy white arms to the sea,
For thy dark cloud, with umber'd lower,
That hung o'er cliff, and lake, and tower,
Thou gleam'st against the western ray
Ten thousand lines of brighter day.

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So thou, fair city, disarray'd

Of battled wall and rampart's aid,
As stately seem'st, but lovelier far,
Than in that panoply of war.

Nor deem that, from thy fenceless throne,
Strength and security are flown;
Still, as of yore, Queen of the North!
Still canst thou send thy children forth.
Ne'er readier at alarm-bell's call,
Thy burghers rose to man the wall,
Than now, in danger, shall be thine,
Thy dauntless voluntary line;

For fosse and turret proud to stand,
Their breasts the bulwark of the land.
Thy thousands, train'd to martial toil,
Full red would stain their native soil,
Ere from thy mural crown there fell
The slightest knosp or pinnacle.

Scott.

SILENCE AFTER THUNDER.

HAST thou not mark'd, when, o'er thy startled head,
Sudden and deep the thunder-peal has roll'd,
How, when its echoes fell, a silence dead
Sunk on the wood, the meadow, and the wold?
The rye grass shakes not on the sod-built fold,
The rustling aspen's leaves are mute and still,
The wall-flower waves not on the ruin'd hold,

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