But now thy vows no more endure,
Bestow'd by thee upon another.

Perhaps his peace I could destroy,
And spoil the blisses that await him;
Yet let my rival smile in joy,

For thy dear sake I cannot hate him.

Ah! since thy angel form is gone,
My heart no more can rest with any ;
But what it sought in thee alone,
Attempts, alas! to find in many.

Then fare thee well, deceitful maid!
'Twere vain and fruitless to regret thee;
Nor Hope, nor Memory yield their aid,
But Pride may teach me to forget thee.

Yet all this giddy waste of years,

This tiresome round of palling pleasures; These varied loves, these matron's fears, These thoughtless strains to passion's measures—

If thou wert mine, had all been hush'd:-
This cheek, now pale from early riot,
With passion's hectic ne'er had flush'd,
But bloom'd in calm domestic quiet.

Yes, once the rural scene was sweet,

For Nature seem'd to smile before thee; (1)

(1)" Our meetings," says Lord Byron in 1822, were stolen ones, and a gate leading from Mr. Chaworth's grounds to those of my mother was the

And once my breast abhorr'd deceit,-
For then it beat but to adore thee.

But now I seek for other joys:

To think would drive my soul to madness;
In thoughtless throngs and empty noise,
I conquer half my bosom's sadness.

Yet, even in these a thought will steal
In spite of every vain endeavour,—
And fiends might pity what I feel,—
To know that thou art lost for ever.

I WOULD I WERE A CARELESS CHILD.

I WOULD I were a careless child,

Still dwelling in my Highland cave, Or roaming through the dusky wild,

Or bounding o'er the dark blue wave, The cumbrous pomp of Saxon (1) pride Accords not with the freeborn soul, Which loves the mountain's craggy side,

And seeks the rocks where billows roll.

Fortune! take back these cultured lands,

Take back this name of splendid sound!

place of our interviews. But the ardour was all on my side. I was serious; she was volatile: she liked me as a younger brother, and treated and laughed at me as a boy; she, however, gave me her picture, and that was something to make verses upon. Had I married her, perhaps the whole tenour of my life would have been different."— E.

(1) Sassenach, or Saxon, a Gaelic word, signifying either Lowland or English.

I hate the touch of servile hands,

I hate the slaves that cringe around. Place me along the rocks I love,

Which sound to Ocean's wildest roar ; I ask but this-again to rove

Through scenes my youth hath known before.

Few are my years, and yet I feel

The world was ne'er design'd for me:
Ah! why do dark'ning shades conceal
The hour when man must cease to be?
Once I beheld a splendid dream,
A visionary scene of bliss:
Truth!-wherefore did thy hated beam
Awake me to a world like this?

I loved - but those I loved are gone;
Had friends - my early friends are fled:
How cheerless feels the heart alone

When all its former hopes are dead!
Though gay companions o'er the bowl
Dispel awhile the sense of ill;

Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul,

The heart the heart

is lonely still. (1)

(1) The "imagination all compact," which the greatest poet who ever lived has assigned as the distinguishing badge of his brethren, is in every case a dangerous gift. It exaggerates, indeed, our expectations, and can often bid its possessor hope, where hope is lost to reason: but the delusive pleasure arising from these visions of imagination resembles that of a child, whose notice is attracted by a fragment of glass to which a sun-beam has given momentary splendour. He hastens to the spot with breathless impatience, and finds the object of his curiosity and expectation is equally vulgar and worthless. Such is the man of quick and exalted powers of im. agination. His fancy over-estimates the object of his wishes, and pleasure, fame, distinction, are alternately pursued, attained, and despised when in

How dull! to hear the voice of those

Whom rank or chance, whom wealth or power, Have made, though neither friends nor foes, Associates of the festive hour.

Give me again a faithful few,

In years and feelings still the same, And I will fly the midnight crew, Where boist'rous joy is but a name.

And woman, lovely woman! thou,
My hope, my comforter, my all!
How cold must be my bosom now,
When e'en thy smiles begin to pall!
Without a sigh would I resign

This busy scene of splendid woe,
To make that calm contentment mine,
Which virtue knows, or seems to know.

Fain would I fly the haunts of men

I seek to shun, not hate mankind; My breast requires the sullen glen,

Whose gloom may suit a darken'd mind.

his power. Like the enchanted fruit in the palace of a sorceror, the objects of his admiration lose their attraction and value as soon as they are grasped by the adventurer's hand, and all that remains is regret for the time lost in the chase, and astonishment at the hallucination under which it was un. dertaken. The disproportion between hope and possession, which is felt by all men, is thus doubled to those whom nature has endowed with the power of gilding a distant prospect by the rays of imagination. These reflections, though trite and obvious, are in a manner forced from us by the poetry of Lord Byron,-by the sentiments of weariness of life and enmity with the world which they so frequently express,-and by the singular analogy which such sentiments hold with well-known incidents of his life. - SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Oh! that to me the wings were given

Which bear the turtle to her nest! Then would I cleave the vault of heaven, To flee away, and be at rest. (1)

WHEN I ROVED A YOUNG HIGHLANDER.

WHEN I roved a young Highlander o'er the dark heath,

And climb'd thy steep summit, oh Morven of snow ! (2)

To gaze on the torrent that thunder'd beneath,
Or the mist of the tempest that gather'd below, (*)

Untutor❜d by science, a stranger to fear,

And rude as the rocks where my infancy grew, No feeling, save one, to my bosom was dear; Need I say, my sweet Mary (4), 'twas centred in you?

(1) " And I said, Oh! that I had wings like a dove; for then would I fly away, and be at rest."-Psalm lv. 6. This verse also constitutes a part of the most beautiful anthem in our language.

(2) Morven, a lofty mountain in Aberdeenshire. an expression frequently to be found in Ossian.

"Gormal of snow," is

(3) This will not appear extraordinary to those who have been accustomed to the mountains. It is by no means uncommon, on attaining the top of Ben-e-vis, Ben-y-bourd, &c. to perceive, between the summit and the val ley, clouds pouring down rain, and occasionally accompanied by lightning, while the spectator literally looks down upon the storm, perfectly secure from its effects.

(4) In Lord Byron's Diary for 1813, he says, "I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word. And the effect! My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour;