Of their own parent spring;-and others too But my soul Long pleased to linger by this silent cave, The flowers and verdure round the sparkling well. Sweet Fount !-Farewell! IHE PASI. How wild and dim this Life appears! One long, deep, heavy sigh! When o'er our eyes, half-closed in tears, The images of former years Are faintly glimmering by! And still forgotten while they go, As on the sea-beach wave on wave Dissolves at once in snow. Upon the blue and silent sky The amber-clouds one moment lie, Though beautiful the moon-beams play, Heaven-airs amid the harp-strings dwell, Dream follows dream through the long night-hours, Each lovelier than the last— But ere the breath of morning flowers, That gorgeous world flies past. And many a sweet angelic cheek, Whose smiles of love and kindness speak, Glides by us on this earth While in a day we cannot tell Where shone the face we loved so well In sadness or in mirth. TO A SLEEPING CHILD. ART thou a thing of mortal birth, Or, art thou, what thy form would seem, A human shape I feel thou art, I feel it at my beating heart, Those tremors both of soul and sense Though dear the forms by fancy wove, To me thy parents are unknown; WILLIAM EDMONDSTONE AYTOUN. PROF. AYTOUN, editor of "Blackwood's Magazine," and author of "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," is a member of the Edinburgh bar, but has never, we believe, devoted himself to any extent to the severer duties of his profession. Some five or six years ago he succeeded Mr. Moir as professor of literature and belles-lettres in the University of Edinburgh, where his lectures-full of pith, energy, and distinguished by fine literary taste-are in great vogue. Professor Aytoun has been for some years one of the chief contributors to "Blackwood's Magazine," and few numbers appear from which his hand is absent. At the time of the railway mania, he flung off a series of papers-the first entitled, "How we got up the Glen Mutchkin Railway," descriptive of the doings in the Capel Court of Edinburgh and Glasgow-papers which, for broad, vigorous humor, and felicitous setting forth of genuine Scottish character, are almost unrivalled. Under the nom de guerre of Augustus Dunshunner, then first adopted-the professor frequently contributes pieces of off-hand criticism on books and men to "Blackwood," taking especial delight in showing up what he conceives to be the weak points of the Manchester school; and humorous though the general tone of the papers be, hesitates not to dash headlong at piles of statistics intended to prop up the fallen causes of protection. Mr. Aytoun's politics, as may be inferred from his sole work, published in independent form, the "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," are high tory, or rather they amount to a sort of poetic and theoretical Jacobitism. |