"Nor he nor I did e'er incline To mar or pluck the blossoms whiteHow should I know but that they might Lead lives as glad as mine? "To make my hermit-home complete, I brought clear water from the spring Praised in its own low murmuring,— And cresses glossy wet. "And so, I thought my likeness grew (Without the melancholy tale) To gentle hermit of the dale, And Angelina too! "For oft I read within my nook Such minstrel stories! till the breeze Made sounds poetic in the trees,— And then I shut the book. "If I shut this wherein I write, 66 My childhood from my life is parted; My footstep from the moss which drew Its fairy circle round: anew The garden is deserted! "Another thrush may there rehearse The madrigals which sweetest areNo more for me !-myself afar Do sing a sadder verse! "Ah me! ah me! when erst I lay "I laughed still, and did not fear "I knew the time would pass away— "The time is past -and now that grows The cypress high among the trees, And I behold white sepulchres As well as the white rose "When wiser, meeker thoughts are given, And I have learnt to lift my face, Remembering earth's greenest place The colour draws from heaven "It something saith for earthly pain, But more for Heavenly promise free, That I who was, would shrink to be That happy child again." "Has not love," says Elizabeth in her Preface," a deeper mystery than wisdom, and a more ineffable lustre than power? I believe it has. I venture to believe those beautiful and of. ten-quoted words, God is Love,' to be even less an expression of condescension towards the finite, than an assertion of essential dignity in Him, who is infinite." To illustrate that attribute she wrote "The Seraphim." But there is nothing in that poem so affecting as the following simple lines. They cannot be read without bringing to mind the sum of all consolation, "Come unto me all ye who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." THE SLEEP. "Of all the thoughts of God that are Borne inward unto souls afar, Along the Psalmist's music deepNow tell me if that any is, For gift or grace, surpassing this'He giveth His beloved, sleep?' "What would we give to our beloved? The hero's heart, to be unmovedThe poet's star-tuned harp, to sweepThe senate's shout to patriot vowsThe monarch's crown, to light the brows? 'He giveth His beloved, sleep.' "What do we give to our beloved? A little faith, all undisprovedA little dust, to overweepAnd bitter memories, to make The whole earth blasted for our sake! 'He giveth His beloved, sleep.' "Sleep soft beloved!' we sometimes say, But have no tune to charm away, Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep; But never doleful dream again Shall break the happy slumber, when 'He giveth His beloved, sleep!' "O earth, so full of dreary noises! men, with wailing in your voices! O delved gold, the wailer's heap! O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall! God makes a silence through you all, And giveth His beloved, sleep! "His dews drop mutely on the hill; His cloud above it saileth still, Though on its slope men toil and reap! More softly than the dew is shed, Or cloud is floated overhead, 'He giveth His beloved, sleep.' "Yea! men may wonder while they scan A living, thinking, feeling man, In such a rest his heart to keep; "For me my heart that erst did go "And friends !-dear friends!-when it shall be That this low breath is gone from me, Cowper has found at last the best of biographers in Southey; and Southey -should he see them-and surely he will-though we think he has somewhere said that he seldom reads the verses of the day-will not withhold his praise from the affecting and beautiful lines on Cowper's Grave. Had they been anonymous, we should have attributed them to Caroline Bowles. COWPER'S GRAVE. "It is a place where poets crowned May feel the heart's decaying It is a place where happy saints May weep amid their prayingYet let the grief and humbleness, As low as silence, languish ; Earth surely now may give her calm To whom she gave her anguish. "O poets! from a maniac's tongue Was poured the deathless singing! O Christians! at your cross of hope A hopeless hand was clinging! O men! this man, in brotherhood, Your weary paths beguiling, Groaned inly while he taught you peace, And died while ye were smiling! "And now, what time ye all may read Through dimming tears his storyHow discord on the music fell, And darkness on the gloryAnd how, when one by one, sweet sounds And wandering lights departed, He wore no less a loving face, Because so broken-hearted "He shall be strong to sanctify The poet's high vocation, And bow the meekest Christian down In meeker adoration: Nor ever shall he be in praise, "With sadness that is calm, not gloom, I learn to think upon him; With meekness that is gratefulness, On God whose heaven hath won himWho suffered once the madness-cloud, Toward His love to blind him; But gently led the blind along Where breath and bird could find him; "And wrought within his shattered brain, Such quick poetic senses, As hills have language for, and stars, The pulse of dew upon the grass, "The very world, by God's constraint, From falsehood's chill removing, Its women and its men became Beside him, true and loving!And timid hares were drawn from woods To share his home caresses, Uplooking to his human eyes With silvan tendernesses. "But while, in blindness he remained Unconscious of the guiding, And things provided came without The sweet sense of providing, He testified this solemn truth, Though frenzy desolatedNor man, nor nature satisfy, When only God created! "Like a sick child that knoweth not The coolness of her kisses; 'My mother! where's my mother?' As if such tender words and looks Could come from any other! "The fever gone, with leaps of heart Which closed in death, to save him! "Thus! oh, not thus! no type of earth More to the mind than to the eye -or rather to some perception belonging to all the senses-is manifested the change that steals over nature towards the to-fall of the day-such change as is now going on among the mountains, and informs us, who have been taking no heed of time, of the very hour, which we could name within a few minutes as surely as if there were a clock to look at in the niche above our head. Is that the murmur of insects or of the sea? That hoarser noise, till now inaudible, is of the cataract behind the Castle, and it tells of Cliffs. The small Loch is smaller in shadow has lost much of its expression -and ceased almost to be beautiful; but the solemnity of the mountainranges, lying far and wide in the blue haze that precedes the twilight, attracts the eyes of a spirit desirous of the calm momently settling deeper and deeper on them all-the uniting calm of earth and heaven. the truth-seldom during all this long Strange and sad to say-but it is lonely day-only then when writing down a few words concerning themhave we thought of them whom we visited in the Castle-last time we were there and who so soon afterwards were dust! To-night we shall go to the Old Burial Place, and sit by their Tomb. Like subterranean music the noise of the Bagpipe comes from the Castle to our Cave. That oldest of Celtsno raven can be his contemporaryis now strutting like a Turkey-cock with his tail up, to and fro on the esplanade-blowing out from below his elbow "The Gathering of the Clans" -for the Yacht is coming up the Loch goose-winged before the wind, and Donald is saluting the advent of his Chieftain, on his return from a victorious expedition into the Forest against the King of the Red-Deer. And there goes the Gong-struck by the Hindu. An hour to dinner-time-and we must descend to our toilet for there is to be a brilliant company this evening at the Castle, and we shall show them in full fig a Lowland Gentleman of the Old School. Ha! Heaven bless thee! and hath Cave to tend our steps down the dell our own Genevieve come again to the and across the bridges? A kiss—not on thy lips but on thy foreheadwreath our arm in thine-and ample and serene! Ay let us "Like Morning brought by Night," shall be our entrance into the Home of thy Fathers. Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Company, Paul's Work. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCLXXV. SEPTEMBER, 1838. VOL. XLIV. CHRISTOPHER AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. FORGIVE us, thou most beautiful of Mornings! for having overslept the assignation hour, and allowed thee to remain all by thy self in the solitude, wondering why thy worshipper could prefer to thy presence the fairest phantoms that ever visited a dream. And thou hast forgiven us-for not clouds of displeasure these that have settled on thy forehead-the unreproaching light of thy countenance is upon us a loving murmur steals into our heart from thine-and pure and holy as a child's, or an angel's, Daughter of Heaven! is thy breath. In the spirit of that invocation we look around us, and as the Idea of Morning dies, sufficient for our happiness is "the light of common day the imagery of common earth. There has been rain during the night — enough, and no more, to enliven the burn, and to brighten its banks-the mists are ascending composedly, with promise of gentle weather-and the sun, so mild that we can look him in the face with unwinking eyes, gives assurance, that as he has risen, so will he reign, and so will he set in peace. Yestreen we came into this glen at gloaming, and rather felt than saw that it was beautiful-we lay down at dark, and let the moon and stars canopy our sleep. Therefore it is almost altogether new to us; yet so congenial its quiet to the longings of our heart, that all at once it is familiar to us as if we had been sojourning here VOL. XLIV. NO, CCLXXV, for many days-as if this cottage were indeed our dwelling-place-and we had retired hither to await the closing of our life. Were we never here before-in the olden and golden time? Those dips in the summits of the mountains seem to recall from oblivion memories of a morning all the same as this, enjoyed by us with a different joy, almost as if then we were a different being, joy then the very element in which we drew our breath, satisfied now to live in the atmosphere of sadness often thickened with grief. 'Tis thus that there grows a confusion among the past times in the dormitory call it not the burial-place-overshadowed by sweet or solemn imagery -in the inland regions of our soul; nor can we question the recollections as they rise-being ghosts, they are silent their coming and their going alike a mystery-but sometimes-as now-they are happy hauntings-and age is almost gladdened into illusion of returning youth. 'Tis a lovely little glen as in all the Highlands-yet we know not that a painter would see in it the subject of a picture for the sprinklings of young trees seem to have been sown capriciously by nature, and there seems no reason why on that hillside, and not on any other, should survive the remains of an old wood. Among the multitude of knolls a few are eminent with rocks and shrubs, but there is no central assemblage, and the green wil T derness wantons in such disorder that you might believe the pools there to be, not belonging as they are to the same running water, but each itself a small separate lakelet fed by its own spring. True, that above its homehills there are mountains-and these are cliffs on which the eagle might not disdain to build-but the range wheels away in its grandeur to face a loftier region, of which we see here but the summits swimming in the distant clouds. God bless this hut! and have its inmates in his holy keeping! They are but few-an aged couple-and their grandchild-a pretty creature and a good-and happy as a bird. Four or five hours' sleep is all we need. This night it was deep-and our thoughts, refreshed by its dew, have unfolded themselves of their own accord, along with the flowers around our feet. Ha! thou art up and singing, thou human Fairy! Start not at the Figure sitting beside the well-'tis he who read the Chapter-and knelt along with thee and them at the Evening-Prayer. mal! A tame fawn, by all that is wild -kneeling down-to drink-no-no at its lady's feet. The colley catched it thou sayest-on the edge of the Auld wood-and by the time its wounds were cured, it seemed to have forgot its mother, and soon learnt to follow thee about to far-off places quite out of sight of this-and to play gamesome tricks like a creature born among human dwellings. What! it dances like a kid-does it—and sometimes you put a garland of wild flowers round its neck-and pursue it like a huntress, as it pretends to be making its escape into the forest! Look, child, here is a pretty green purse for you, that opens and shuts with a spring-so-and in it there is a gold coin, called a sovereign, and a crooked sixpence. Don't blush-that was a graceful curtsey. Keep the crooked sixpence for good luck, and you never will want. With the yellow fellow buy a Sunday gown and a pair of Sunday shoes, and what else you like; and now-you two lead the way-try a race to the door-and old Set down thy pitcher, my child, and Christopher North will carry the pitlet us have a look at thy happiness-cher-balancing it on his head-thus for though thou mayst wonder at our words, and think us a strange old man, coming and going, once and for ever, to thee and thine a shadow and no more, yet lean thy head towards us that we may lay our hands on it and bless it and promise, as thou art growing up here, sometimes to think of the voice that spake to thee by the Birk-tree-well. Love, fear, and serve God as the Bible teaches-and whatever happens thee, quake not, but put thy trust in Heaven. Nay-weep not, though we know that thy father is dead, and that thou hast neither sister nor brother. Smile —laugh—sing-as thou wert doing a minute ago as thou hast done for many a morning-and shall do for many a morning more on thy way to the well-in the woods-on the braes -in the house-often all by thyself when the old people are out of doors not far off or when sometimes they have for a whole day been from home out of the glen. Forget not our words --and no evil can befall thee that may not, weak as thou art, be borne-and nothing wicked that is allowed to walk the earth, will ever be able to hurt a hair on thy head. -ha! The Fawn has it, and, by a neck, has beat Camilla. "We salt it, We shall breakfast ere we go-and breakfast well too,-for this is a poor man's, not a pauper's hut, and Heaven still grants his prayer-"give us this day our daily bread." Sweeterricher bannocks o' barley-meal never met the mouth of mortal man-nor more delicious butter. sir, for a friend in Glasgow-but now and then we take a bite of the freshlet me put another spoonful of sugar into your tea, sir-do oblige us a', sir, by eatin' as many eggs as you ha'e a mind to, for our hens are gran' layers-you'll maybe find the muttonham no that bad, though I've kent it fatter-and, as you ha'e a long walk afore you, excuse me, sir, for being sae bauld as to suggest a glass o' speerit in your neist cup. The gudeman is temperate, and he's been sae a' his life-but we keep it for a cordial-and that bottle-to be sure it's a gae big ane-and would thole replenishinghas lasted us syne the New Year." So presseth us to take care of number one the gude-wife, while the gudeman, busy as ourselves, eyes her with a well-pleased face, but saith nothing, My stars! what a lovely little ani- and the bonnie wee bit lassie sits on |