For thou canst give us back the dead, Then blest be Nature's guardian Muse, From Love began thy high descent; DRINKING SONG OF MUNICH. My golden flagons I would fill Like rivers crimson'd with the beam Our balmy cups should ever stream No care should touch the mellow heart, For wine can triumph over woe, And Love and Bacchus, brother powers, LINES ON REVISITING A SCOTTISH RIVER. AND call they this Improvement?-to have changed, My native Clyde, thy once romantic shore, Lie sere and leafless now in summer's beam, And for the daisied green-sward, down thy stream Unsightly brick-lanes smoke, and clanking engines gleam. Speak not to me of swarms the scene sustains; One heart free tasting Nature's breath and bloom Is worth a thousand slaves to Mammon's gains. But whither goes that wealth, and gladd'ning whom? See, left but life enough, and breathing-room From morn till midnight task'd to earn its little meal. Is this Improvement?-where the human breed Improvement!-smiles it in the poor man's eyes, To gorge a few with Trade's precarious prize, We banish rural life, and breathe unwholesome skies. Nor call that evil slight; God has not given For Earth's green face, th' untainted air of Hea ven, And all the bliss of Nature's rustic reign. My Wallace's own stream, and once romantic LINES ON REVISITING CATHCART. OH! scenes of my childhood, and dear to my heart, Ye green-waving woods on the margin of Cart, How blest in the morning of life I have stray'd By the stream of the vale and the grass-cover'a glade! Then, then, every rapture was young and sincere, Ere the sunshine of bliss was bedimm'd by a tear, And a sweeter delight every scene seem'd to lend, That the mansion of peace was the house of a FRIEND. Now the scenes of my childhood and dear to my heart, All pensive I visit, and sigh to depart; Their flowers seem to languish, their beauty to cease, For a stranger inhabits the mansion of peace. But hush'd be the sigh that untimely complains, While Friendship and all its enchantment remains, While it blooms like the flower of a winterless clime, Untainted by chance, unabated by time. THE "NAME UNKNOWN;" IN IMITATION OF KLOPSTOCK. PROPHETIC pencil! wilt thou trace Or wilt thou write the "Name Unknown," Ordain'd to bless my charmed soul, And all my future fate controul, Unrivall'd and alone? Delicious Idol of my thought! Though sylph or spirit hath not taught My boding heart thy precious name; Thy rosy blush, thy meaning eye, Åre ever present to my heart; Thy murmur'd vows shall yet be mine, Then fly, my days, on rapid wing, A power in mystic silence seal'd, And bless the "Name Unknown!" TRAFALGAR. WHEN Frenchmen saw, with coward art, That pierced Britain's noblest heart, Their shout was heard,-they triumph'd now And thought the British oak would bow. But fiercer flamed old England's pride, |