THE SHEPHERD AND ECHO. Dixerat, hic quis adest? Et adest, responderat echo. YOUNG echo lived within a rock, Alone, and far from human dwelling; Where torrents wild the stillness broke, All silence from the glens dispelling. Her wild and never-ceasing wail, He sought her long through glen and dale, Drown'd her sighs in the water's falling. She must be fair-for her voice is sweet, O maiden! leave this lone retreat, And hie with me to the plains to-morrow. But echo laugh'd till the welkin rung, And flew on the breeze the greenwood over, While birds their sweetest warblings sung, Where pleased and grieved, reclined the lover. BOWERDALE. He sought the grotto, ranged the grove, Like pilgrim, to the vale again His wandering footsteps onward bore him; Her voice came laughing through the glen, Then died in breezy whispers o'er him. 'Tis a wild-goose chase!—I'll seek my home, BOWERDALE. Air.-"THE YOUNG MAY MOON." THE Woodlark sang through fair Bowerdale, Left alone in the bower, Where I parted from her, was cold and pale. All the world behind, I gave to the wind; With Helen to live, and to love alone. 235 What sorrows were ours when fortune fled, Through my bosom, were crush'd In their dawn, when ruin hung o'er my head- On my damp brow fell, When I tore from my love and my native isle! Through India's plains I roam'd afar, And courted solace 'midst the strife of war: Through danger's array, She beam'd in my bosom hope's brightest star! O'er the dales and the floods; REMORSE. AWAY! from the dread fascinations that flow'd, Where the wine circled round, and the warm bosom glow'd, THE FATE OF EVELINA. 237 I sought the deep grove, and the night's chilling breeze, Where the cottage of Jessy was seen through the trees; And vow'd soon as morning gave reason her reign, That I never would play the wild rover again. I wander'd unconscious that love led me there, THE FATE OF EVELINA. THE lava was rolling his burning flood O'er the vineyards since day begun; While the dense dark clouds threw a midnight veil Yon burning groves will light our way Evelina, fly!-thy loved cottage shun— To a safe retreat, since the lamp of day Is gone from our sight. From ruin run- The poison'd breeze-should its tainted breath Where the palm and the olive lights the gloom, In vain the peasant besought his bride, When the lava closed, and the fire-shower fell, Still the peasant linger'd with frantic yell, Beloved Evelina, come! The catastrophe narrated here, is presumed to have taken place during the great eruption of Mount Vesuvius, in June 1794, as described by Sir William Hamilton, in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. 73; after reading his remarks made while at Rosarno and the ruined towns around it, especially the first sentence of the following: In "The male dead were generally found under the ruins, in the attitude of struggling against the danger; but the female attitude was usually with hands clasped over their heads, as giving themselves up to despair, unless they had children near them. which case, they were always found clasping the children in their arms, or in some attitude or other, which indicated their anxious care to protect them. A strong instance of the maternal tenderness of the sex. "" |