Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, Housed, in a dream, at distance from the Kind! Such happiness, wherever it be known, Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind. But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer, And frequent sights of what is to be borne ! GLEN-ALMAIN; OR, THE NARROW GLEN. IN this still place, remote from men, And should, methinks, when all was past, Have rightfully been laid at last Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild, And every thing unreconciled; In some complaining, dim retreat, But this is calm; there cannot be A more entire tranquillity. Does then the Bard sleep here indeed? What matters it?-I blame them not Was moved; and in such way expressed Their notion of its perfect rest. A convent, even a Hermit's cell, Would break the silence of this Dell : But something deeper far than these: Is of the grave; and of austere WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF MACPHERSON'S OSSIAN. OFT have I caught, upon a fitful breeze, With ear not coveting the whole, A part so charmed the pensive soul. What need, then, of these finished Strains? An abbey in its lone recess, A temple of the wilderness, Wrecks though they be, announce with feeling The majesty of honest dealing. Spirit of Ossian ! if imbound In language thou may'st yet be found, If aught (intrusted to the pen Or floating on the tongues of men, In concert with memorial claim Of old gray stone, and high-born name, That cleaves to rock or pillared cave, Where moans the blast, or beats the wave, Let Truth, stern arbitress of all, Interpret that original, And for presumptuous wrongs atone; Time is not blind;-yet He, who spares Pyramid pointing to the Stars, Hath preyed with ruthless appetite On all that marked the primal flight Of the poetic ecstasy Into the land of mystery. No tongue is able to rehearse One measure, Orpheus! of thy verse; When thousands, by severer doom, Have sunk, at Nature's call; or strayed Hail, Bards of mightier grasp ! on you Dropped from the lenient cloud of years. Brothers in Soul! though distant times Such to the tender-hearted Maid X Appears, on Morven's lonely shore, Such Milton, to the fountain-head THE WISHING-GATE. In the vale of Grasmere, by the side of the highway leading to Ambleside, is a gate, which, time out of mind, has been called the Wishing-gate, from a belief that wishes formed or indulged there have a favourable issue. HOPE rules a land for ever green : All powers that serve the bright-eyed Queen Clouds at her bidding disappear; Points she to aught?-the bliss draws near, And Fancy smooths the way. Not such the land of wishes-there Dwell fruitless day-dreams, lawless prayer, |