Go, bid the bravest heart advance
In single fight, to measure lance
With me, who wait prepared to meet him!'
'Fly!—Bothwell, fly!-It shall not be.'
She wept-she sobbed-on bended knee
Fair Mary did entreat him.
'I go,' he sighed 'the war is mine, A Nero could not injure thee;— My lot on earth is sealed, but thine
Shall long, and bright, and happy be !— This last farewell-this struggle o'er, We ne'er shall see each other more:
Now loose thy hold, poor broken-hearted!'— She faints she falls,-Upon his roan
The bridle reins in haste are thrownThe pilgrim hath departed.
Know ye the tenor of his fate?-
A fugitive among his own;
Disguised-deserted-desolate_
A weed on Niagara thrown;
A Cain among the sons of men;
A pirate on the ocean; then,
A Scandinavian captive fettered
To die amid the dungeon gloom,—
If earthly chance, or heavenly doom
Is dark-but so it mattered.
Daughter of Scotland! Beautiful,
Beyond what falls to human lot,
Thy breathing features rendered dull,
The visions of a poet's thought!
Thy voice was music on the deep,
When winds are hushed, and waves asleep;
In mould and mind by far excelling,
Or Cleopatra on the wave
Of Cydnus vanquishing the brave,
Or Troy's resplendent Helen'
Thy very sun in clouds arose,
Delightful flower of Holyrood!
Thy span was tempest-fraught ;—thy woes
Should make thee pitied by the good.
Poor Mary! an untimely tomb
Was thine! With prison hours of gloom,
A crown, and rebel crowds beneath thee;
A lofty fate-a lowly fall!
Thou wert a woman: and let all
Thy faults be buried with thee!
Blackwood's Magazine.
BY THE REV. GEORGE CROLY.
IN the dim chamber, on his couch of Ind,
Hung round with crest, and sword, and knightly vane,
Was stretched a cuirassed form, that inly pined
With memories keener than his mortal pain;
And oft around his darkening eyes would strain,
As if some evil visitant were come;
Then press his wasted hand upon his brain,
Mutter low words, and beckon through the gloom,
And
grasp his couch, as if he saw the opening tomb.
The fearful secret murmured from his lips-
'Twas 'Murder;' but his voice was now a sigh;
For o'er his spirit gathered swift eclipse.
He strove to dash the darkness from his eye,
Then smote with nerveless hand upon his thigh;
But there the sword was not; a deeper groan,—
A start, as if the Summoner were nigh,—
Told his last pangs; his eye was fixed as stone :—
There lay a livid corse, the Master of a Throne !
New Times.
ART thou returned again? The labouring breast,
The full and swelling soul, the throbbing brain,
Are signs of thee; by these wert thou confessed
In the fierce glow of summer, in the wane
Of autumn, in the cloud and hurricane
Of winter, and the changeful dawn of spring.
Thou art returned, for fancy wakes the strain;
And as I bend me to her summoning,
Thy spell is o'er me cast, thy visions round me cling.
Whence, and what art thou? I have felt thy power
When my soul wished not for thee. I have sought
And found thee not. In life's aspiring hour,
Courted and worshipped, to my youthful thought
No utterance thou gavest. I had wrought
The chaplet for my fair one; I had strung
The rosary of hope, and love had taught
My heart love's rhetoric; yet never hung
Thy charm upon my lips, thy numbers on my tongue.
I courted thee no longer,-for the tomb
Made havoc of my hopes, and I became
The sport and prey of sorrow; but in gloom
And solitude, in misery and shame,
In every feeling that unnerves the frame,
Thy impulse was upon me: then arose
My first and rude attempt; then didst thou claim
Thy long rejected suppliant, and disclose,
In simple humble strain, the descant of his woes.
I will not, cannot flee thee! Thou must be
As present on the full and noisy mart,
As in the desert; upon plain or sea,
On wold, or mountain, of myself be part.
I cannot flee thee! Round this widowed heart
Cling, if thou wilt, but spare thy wearied slave!
Exert thy nobler power, thy greater heart;
Bid the vain world resume whate'er it gave,-
But speak of brighter hopes,—of bliss beyond the grave.
London Magazine.
THE birds have sung themselves to rest,
That flitted 'round our bower;
The weight of the night-dew has bowed
The head of every flower;
The ringing of the hunter's horn
Has ceased upon the hill,
The cottage windows gleam with light,
The harvest song is still;
And safe and silent in the bay,
Is moored each fisher's prow;
Each wearied one has sought his home
But where, my love, art thou?
I picked a rose, a red blush rose,
Just as the dews begun,
I kissed its leaves, but thought one kis
Would be a sweeter one.
I kept the rose and kiss, I thought
How dear they both would be
But now I fear the rose and kiss
Are kept in vain for thee!
Blackwood's Magazine.
How sweet and solemn, all alone,
With reverend step, from stone to stone
In a small village church-yard lying,
O'er intervening flowers to move-
And as we read the names unknown,
Of young and old, to judgment gone,
And hear, in the calm air above,
Time onwards softly flying,
To meditate, in Christian love,
Upon the dead and dying!
Across the silence seem to go
With dream-like motion, wavery, slow,
And shrouded in their folds of snow,
The friends we loved long, long ago!
Gliding across the sad retreat,
How beautiful their phantom feet!
What tenderness is in their eyes,
Turned where the poor survivor lies,
'Mid monitory sanctities!
What years of vanished joy are fanned
From one uplifting of that hand
In its white stillness ! When the shade
Doth glimmeringly in sunshine fade
From our embrace, how dim appears
This world's life through a mist of tears!
Vain hopes! Wild sorrows! Needless fears!
Such is the scene around me now :
A little church-yard, on the brow
Of a green pastoral hill;
Its sylvan village sleeps below,
And faintly, here, is heard the flow
Of Woodburn's summer rill;
A place where all things mournful meet,
And, yet, the sweetest of the sweet!-
The stillest of the still!
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