ON SOME SKULLS IN BEAULEY ABBEY,

NEAR INVERNESS.

IN silent barren synod met

Within these roofless walls, where yet
The severed arch and carved fret

Cling to the ruin,

The brethren's skulls mourn, dewy wet,

Their creed's undoing.

The mitred ones of Nice and Trent
Were not so tongue-tied; no, they went
Hot to their councils, scarce content
With orthodoxy ;

But ye, poor tongueless things, were meant
To speak by proxy.

Your chronicles no more exist,
For Knox, the revolutionist,
Destroyed the work of every fist

That scrawled black letter;

Well! I'm a craniologist,

And may do better.

This skull-cap wore the cowl from sloth,
Or discontent, perhaps from both;
And yet one day, against his oath,

He tried escaping;

For men, though idle, may be loth

To live on gaping.

A toper this! he plied his glass
More strictly than he said the mass,
And loved to see a tempting lass

Come to confession,

Letting her absolution pass

O'er fresh transgression.

ON SOME SKULLS IN BEAULEY ABBEY.

This crawled through life in feebleness,
Boasting he never knew excess,

Cursing those crimes he scarce could guess,
Or feel but faintly,

With prayers that Heaven would cease to bless
Men so unsaintly.

Here's a true churchman !-he'd affect
Much charity, and ne'er neglect

To pray for mercy on the elect,

But thought no evil

In sending heathen, Turk, and sect,
All to the devil.

Poor skull, thy fingers set a-blaze,
With silver saint in golden rays,
The holy missal; thou didst craze

'Mid bead and spangle,

While others passed their idler days,

In coil and wrangle.

Long time this sconce a helmet wore,—
But sickness smites the conscience sore;
He broke his sword, and hither bore

His gear and plunder,

Took to the cowl,-then raved and swore
At his damned blunder!

This lily-coloured skull, with all

The teeth complete, so white and small,
Belonged to one whose early pall

A lover shaded;

He died ere superstition's gall

His heart invaded.

Ha! here is "undivulged crime !"
Despair forbade his soul to climb

28

ON SOME SKULLS IN BEAULEY ABBEY.

Beyond this world, this mortal time

Of fevered sadness,

Until their monkish pantomime

Dazzled his madness,

A younger brother this,-a man
Aspiring as a Tartar Khan,
But, curbed and baffled, he began

The trade of frightening;

It smacked of power!-and here he ran

To deal Heaven's lightning.

This idiot skull belonged to one,
A buried miser's only son,

Who penitent, ere he'd begun

To taste of pleasure,

And hoping Heaven's dread wrath to shun,

Gave hell his treasure.

Here is the forehead of an ape,

A robber's mark, and near the nape

That bone, fie on't!

Ah! he was one for

bears just the shape
Of carnal passion;
theft and rape,

In monkish fashion.

This was the porter! he could sing,
Or dance, or play,-do any thing,
And what the friars bade him bring

They ne'er were balked of;

Matters not worth remembering,

And seldom talked of.

Enough! why need I farther pore?
This corner holds at least a score,
And yonder twice as many more

Of reverend brothers;

'Tis the same story o'er and o'er,

They're like the others.

A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE.*

BY ALARIC A. WATTS.

What now to her is all the world esteems?
She is awake, and cares not for its dreams;
But moves, while yet on earth, as one above

Its hopes and fears-its loathing and its love.-CRABBE.

'Tis said she once was beautiful ;-and still
(For 'tis not years that can have wrought her ill)
Deep rays of loveliness around her form

Beam, as the rainbow that succeeds the storm
Brightens a glorious ruin. In her face,

Though something touched by sorrow, you may trace
The all she was, when first in life's young spring,
Like the gay bee-bird on delighted wing,
She stooped to cull the honey from each flower
That bears its breast in joy's luxuriant bower!
O'er her pure forehead, pale as moonlit snow,
Her ebon locks are parted ;-and her brow
Stands forth like morning from the shades of night,
Serene, though clouds hang o'er it. The bright
And searching glance of her Ithuriel eye,
Might even the sternest hypocrite defy
To meet it unappalled ;-'twould almost seem,
As though, epitomized in one deep beam,
Her full collected soul upon the heart,
Whate'er its mask, she strove at once to dart :
And few may brave the talisman that's hid
'Neath the dark fringes of her drooping lid.

Patient in suffering, she has learned the art
To bleed in silence, and conceal the smart,

* From a volume of poems printed for private circulation.