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Within thy rueful cells and shades profound,
Where the grim monk, in sacerdotal weeds,
By guilt, and crime, and terror circled round,
And Penance, pouring forth her ruthless deeds.

No tearless anguish lifts the wailing eye

To holy fraud, and breathes the tale sincereNo bleeding hearts for absolution sigh,

Nor fresh indulgence asked nor granted here.

The curtain's dropped-the theatre stands alone—
Scenes, acts, and actors in oblivion laid;
Here all is o'er, for ever past and gone,
Fled like the baseless fabric of a shade.

Though now with deep reluctance and regret,
Thy humid cells and courts I bid adieu—
Their grave instructions can the heart forget,
If once it but their power and pathos knew?

How vain are volumes here the Muse to teach,
To lure to virtue and inspire her lays,
Compared with these dumb monitors, that preach
Their sober homilies a thousand ways!

Heaven! while I wander through life's thorny waste,

Where care, and vanity, and vice ensnare,

Grant from the soul their truths be ne'er effaced,
But treasured up as precious jewels there.

I

Then fare thee well, to me thrice hallowed fane !
Adieu, ye flowery glens and sylvan shades,
Eve's dusky mantle now enrobes the plain,
And on the view the classic landscape fades.

THE WANDERING POOR.

OD help the poor! protect them by the way, While through life's weary wilderness they stray; What storms, what tempests, in perpetual strife, From day to day o'ercast their sky of life— God help the poor !

What bitter sorrow, hardship, and distress
In endless forms upon the helpless press,
Forlorn and destitute, without a home,
Defenceless, friendless, thus they wretched roam-
God help the poor!

From house to house, soliciting in sighs
The stinted morsel with imploring eyes,
Oft sneeringly bestowed in cold disdain,
Only to wound the wounded heart again—
God help the poor!

Here from the gate chased by the mastiff's growl, There from the dwelling spurned with fiendish howl, Repulsed with insult, infamy, and scorn,

By haughty menials galling to be borne

God help the poor !

Wandering o'er mountains, through the lonely glen,
Unheeded by the callous sons of men,

While fertile plains and Nature's barren wild
Are scoured in suff'ring by misfortune's child—
God help the poor!

Exposed to scorching ray's of summer's sun
And winter's blast, life's cheerless race they run;
Through moor and marsh, in hunger and in pain,
Blanched by the snow, and battered by the rain-
God help the poor!

With tattered garments into fragments torn,
Oft with their hapless progeny forlorn,

They haunt the rock, for shelter seek the glade,
And oft the hay ruck is their only shade-

God help the poor !

ON THE WRECK OF THE PEGASUS,

A Hull and Leith Steamer, which happened about the
end of July 1843.

OW thrice enchanting shone that fatal eve! What pen or pencil can its sweets portray! When Pegasus lay loading, Leith to leave, Decked as a Nymph fair on her nuptial day, To plough the trackless deep, old Hull to pay Her wonted visit, as for many a year,

Fraught with a cargo of the grave and gay !
The brave and timid in the group appear—
The sons of Truth, with those who at her sneer.

And, lo! amid the circling fairy throng,
The reverend father and the laurelled sage;
There buoyant youth chants o'er the am'rous song,
And wave the locks dipt in the snows of age;
And there the lovers in fresh vows engage,
With burning words and dream of nuptial joys;
The sportive boy and prattling girl, too, wage
Their juvenile disputes o'er games and toys—
All seemed to pluck the fruit that never cloys.

Bright shone the Sun, to bless them with his smile, To gild creation and the slumbering wave;

Ah! little dreamt they, ere a little while,

That he would thus shine o'er their common grave, And stormy billows would above them rave! That they to "Scotia" might have bid farewell, To home, to friends, and all the world e'er gave; That those they left behind should shortly tell, With many a sob, what fate to them befel!

Alas! for frail short-sighted fleeting man,
Pleased with the foibles of the passing hour;
How full of hope to-day, of scheme and plan,
To-morrow blasted as the fragile flower!
Or like the leaves when Autumn sweeps the bower,
Soon, soon, to be as if he ne'er had been,
By Death's invading and relentless power,
On Life's precarious, ever-shifting scene,
Where care and sorrow blight each joy we glean.

Then came the hour, the gangway drawn ashore,
The cable hauled, and all obstructions clear;
All then was right, thence dashing off she bore
Her way across the glassy deep to steer,
And like a ploughshare Ocean's breast to tear;
While beat each heart with feelings strange and new,
Increasing pleasure banished every fear,
As fairy scenes thick crowded on the view,
And from the gaze successively withdrew.

The glowing landscape, robed in Summer's prideThe spreading forest-distant hills arose

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