ADDRESS TO LORD BYRON. Yearning, unconscious, for the light divine; Would thou hadst loved through Judah's courts to stray; Would Sion Hill Parnassus' love might share; Where poets harped ere Homer's shell was strung, But, thanks for what we have; and for the more Thy muse doth bid the listening ear attend, Nor vainly bids those whom she charmed before; Oh! let not then this humble verse offend, Her skill can judge the speaking of a friend; Not zeal presumptuous promps the cautious strain, But Christian zeal, that would to all extend The cloudless ray and steady calm that reign, Where evangelic truths their empire due maintain. CULLODEN. WHY linger on this battle heath, But let us hence: It marks a grave! Long years ago, from o'er the sea, And succour in his sire's decline. Ambition's toys—his birthright were: And there we saw the chequered plaid Its black plumes streaming in the blast: In sooth it was a stirring sight! To these old eyes, grown dim with tears, Still, piercing through the after-night, The past in all its pomp appears. These sheltered glens and dusky hills, Yon isles that gem the western wave, Sent forth their strength like mountain rills, To bleed, to die,-but not to save. CULLODEN. Away we rushed, for chiefs were there; And yon young regal warrior, too, Then came the Southron hand to hand, And swept their trembling ranks away. The foe waxed strong: our chieftains frowned We basely left our vantage ground, And turned us home like beaten men. Yet England's blue-eyed yeomen bold, Though vaunting in their long array, Confessed it was no play to hold, Or strike, the mountain deer at bay. At length Culloden's boding heath, The flower of many a warrior clan, 91 Our chieftains sought their native hills; THE SHIPWRECK OF CAMOËNS. "On his return from banishment, Camoëns was shipwrecked at the mouth of the river Gambia. He saved himself by clinging to a plank, and of all his little property succeeded only in saving his poem of the Luciad, deluged with the waves as he brought it in his hand to shore.*"-SISMONDI. I saw him beat the surges under him, And ride upon their backs; he trod the water, CLOUDS gathered o'er the dark blue sky, And fearfully the lightning flashed Around the ship's tall mast, While mournfully through the creaking shrouds *He is described with his sword in his hand upon the authority of his own words : "N' huma mao livros, n'outra, ferro et aco, N'huma mao sempre a espada, n'outra a pena." THE SHIPWRECK OF CAMOËNS. With pallid cheek the seamen shrank For they gazed on the black and boiling sea But on the vessel's deck stood one And calmly to his arm he bound Then stretched his sinewy arms, and cried : The limbs that have spurned a tyrant's chain "Now let the strife of nature rage, Where'er the waters may bear me on, The dreaded moment came too soon, Till the wall of waters closed around, Then rose one wild, half-stifled cry; The stranger's struggling form; And the meteor flash of his sword might seem |