EPITAPH ON A WELL-KNOWN ONE. SENEATH this sod a baneful viper lies, By earth abhorred, an outcast from the skies; Through life he wronged, defrauded, and oppressed, A Pharisaic, ravening wolf at best. He wore religion as a priest his gown; And Falsehood, blushing, claimed him for her own. Deaf to the plaints of pity and of woe, Let midnight's pall for ever shroud his name, LENNEL CHURCHYARD. TLY, ye profane; else rev'rently draw near Scene of dull solitude and holy fear, Deep sighs the wind-hark! its prophetic sound, As moaning sweeps it through the distant trees, And how the lonely owlet's plaint profound Accords distinctly with the fitful breeze. Around, the soothing symphony to swell, Impetuous Time, who can arrest thee? None. The widowed heart in sorrow but to mourn. Here many sleep embalmed in memory dear, O'er whom with me ecstatic fled the hours, But o'er whose blasted friendship drops the tear; Can I forget-O never !-yonder bowers? K Precarious, short-lived, sublunary joy, Yea all, at best, how mutable and vain! Proclaims the silent eloquence of Death, Whose dreary province is earth's wide domain, Writhing convulsed beneath his septic breath. Where now distinction, honour, homage? where Pride, avarice, ambition, and our hate? And where contention affluence to share, 'Mongst all these melancholy heaps of fate? Soon shall I be what I, alas ! deplore My name, my years, be read by passers-by; O'er the frail stone, which tells I am no more, Some friend may drop a tear, or heave a sigh. MY NATIVE BORDER HOME. FOR yon heights where waves the pine, Again there let me roam: What charms on earth can rival thine, Who would not gladly bid adieu To hail the pleasures ever new How sweet through blue-bells there to wade, To hear beneath the vernal shade And give me there alone to stray, The lovely landscape, fresh and gay, Its magic scenes unfold. There wafts the Tweed her pearly tide, How soft her murmuring flow, Bathing her osier emerald side, Where fragrant hawthorns blow And oh, yon hallowed craggy steep, And there the peaceful hamlet spreads, And sweet the daisy-spangled mead, Of life's ambrosial cloudless morn, That gambolled gay beneath the thorn, I see them imaged in the clouds, Thus sacred thrice those scenes to me, How thrilling how benign! Round which, as ivy round the tree, My sympathies entwine. |