Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above;

And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,

Doth work like madness in the brain.
And then it chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline,
Each spake words of high disdain

And insult to his heart's best brother,
And parted-ne'er to meet again!

But never either found another,
To free the hollow heart from paining:
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder,
A dreary sea now flows between;
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been.

To a Mountain Daisy.

On turning one down with the plough in April, 1786.
Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,
Thou'st met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure

Thy slender stem;
To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonnie gem.

Alas! it's no thy neibor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet
Bending thee mang the dewy weet!

Wi' speckled breast,
When upward springing, blithe, to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth

Amid the storm

Scarce reared above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, High sheltering woods and was maun shield, But thou, beneath the random bie'd

O clad or stane,

Adorns the histie stibble field
Unseen, alane.

There in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise ;
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet flowret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betrayed,
And guileless trust,
Till she, like thee, all soil'd is laid
Low i' the dust.

Such is the fate of simple bard
On life's rough ocean luckless starred,
Unskilful he to note the card

Of prudent lore,

Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,
And whelm him o'er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given,
Who long with wants and woes has striven
By human pride or cunning driven

To misery's brink,

Till wrenched of every stay but heaven,

He, ruined, sink !

Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate,
That fate is thine-no distant date;
Stem ruin's ploughshare drives, elate,

Full on thy bloom,

Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight
Shall be thy doom.

The Captive Knight.

'Twas a trumpet's pealing sound!
And the Knight looked down from the Paynim's tower
Where a Christian host, in its pride and power,
Through the pass beneath him wound.
Cease awhile Clarion! Clarion wild and shrill,
Cease! let them hear the Captive's voice, be still.

I knew 'twas a trumpet's note,
And I see my brethren's lances gleam,
And their pennons wave by the mountain stream,
Aud their plumes to the glad wind float.

I am here with my heavy chain,
And I look on a torrent sweeping by;
And an eagle rushing to the sky;

And a host to its battle plain.

Must J pine in my fetters here,

With the wild waves foam, and the free bird's flight,

And the tall spears glancing on my sight,
And the trumpet in my ear.

They are gone! they have all pass'd by !
They, in whose wars I had borne my part,
They, that I loved with a brother's heart.
They have left me here to die.
Sound again Clarion ! Clarion pour thy blast,
Sound! for the Captive's dream of hope is past.

The Song of the Shirt.

With fingers weary and worn, with eyelids heavy and red,

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, plying her needle and thread:

Stitch! stitch! stitch! in poverty, hunger, and dirt; And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch, she sang the "Song of the Shirt."

"Work! work! work! while the cock is crowing aloof!

And work - work-work-till the stars shine through the roof!

It's O! to be a slave along with the barbarous Turk, Where a woman has never a soul to save, if this be Christian's work!

"Work-work-work-till the brain begins to swim; And work-work-work-till the eyes are heavy and dim!

Seam, and gussett, and band-band, and gusset, and

seam,

Till over the buttons I fall asleep, and sew them on in a dream!

"O! men, with sisters dear!-O! men! with mothers and wives!

It is not linen you're wearing out, but human creatures lives.

Stich-stitch-stitch-in poverty, hunger, and dirt, Sewing at once, with a double thread, a shroud as well as a shirt.

"But why do I talk of death that phantom of grisly bone?

I hardly fear his terrible shape, it seems so like my

own

It seems so like my own, because of the fasts I keep : Alas! that bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap!

"Work-work-work-my labour never flags : And what are its wages? a bed of straw-a crust of bread and rags;

That shattered roof, and this naked floor-a table -a broken chair

And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank for sometimes falling there.

"Work-work-work! from weary chime to chime, Work-work-work, as prisoners work for crime! Band, and gusset, and seam-seam, and gusset, and band,

Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed, as well as the weary hand.

"Work-work--work-in the dull December light, And work-work-work-when the weather is warm

and bright,

While underneath the eaves the brooding swallows cling,

As if to shew their sunny backs, and twit me with the Spring.