LINES

ON REVISITING A SCOTTISH RIVER.

AND call they this Improvement ?—to have changed,
My native Clyde, thy once romantic shore,
Where Nature's face is banish'd and estranged,

And Heaven reflected in thy wave no more;

Whose banks, that sweeten'd May-day's breath

before,

Lie sere and leafless now in summer's beam,

With sooty exhalations cover'd o'er ;

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

The hunger and the hope of life to feel,

Yon pale Mechanic bending o'er his loom,

And Childhood's self as at Ixion's wheel,

From morn till midnight task'd to earn its little meal.

Is this Improvement ?—where the human breed
Degenerates as they swarm and overflow,

Till Toil grows cheaper than the trodden weed,

And man competes with man, like foe with foe,

Till Death, that thins them, scarce seems public

woe ?

Improvement!-smiles it in the poor man's eyes,

Or blooms it on the cheek of Labour?-No

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

This passion to the heart of man in vain,

For Earth's green face, th' untainted air of Heaven,

And all the bliss of Nature's rustic reign.

For not alone our frame imbibes a stain

From fœtid skies; the spirit's healthy pride

Fades in their gloom - And therefore I complain,

That thou no more through pastoral scenes shouldst

glide,

My Wallace's own stream, and once romantic Clyde!

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'd 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.