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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.
Gold was his god, and gain his soul's delight;
For this he toiled, that hunted day and night.

Deaf to the plaints of pity and of woe,
His frozen heart was never taught to glow;
But every claim of wretchedness withstood,
Nor felt the luxury of doing good.

Let midnight's pall for ever shroud his name,
His memory rotten with it share the same;
And let his natal and his mortal day,
Accursed, blasted, from the earth decay!

LENNEL CHURCHYARD.

TLY, ye profane; else rev'rently draw near
With awe this hallowed, melancholy spot,

Scene of dull solitude and holy fear,
Inspiring dread and venerable thought.

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,
Commingle soft the murmurs of the Tweed,
Sweeping each fairy bank and classic dell,
Time symbolizing in her winged speed.

Impetuous Time, who can arrest thee? None.
Wafting adown thy tide, at every turn,
Our fondest hopes, and leaving thus alone

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,
Bright vision of to-day, to-morrow gone,
Fruit which to Fancy never seems to cloy;
But realized, ah! unalloyed by none.

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,
My native border home?

Who would not gladly bid adieu
Betimes to toil and care-

To hail the pleasures ever new
That richly blossom there?

How sweet through blue-bells there to wade,
And see the primrose spring-

To hear beneath the vernal shade
The mellow warblers sing!

And give me there alone to stray,
In rapture to behold

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,
Where silence reigns alone,
And countless throngs oblivious sleep,
Of years and ages gone.

And there the peaceful hamlet spreads,
Where fields and orchards smile;
And hail, embraced by deep'ning shades,
Yon fairy portly pile.

And sweet the daisy-spangled mead,
Where blithe the lambkin plays;
How bland its charms renew indeed
The joys of other days.

Of life's ambrosial cloudless morn,
Where now the seraph band,

That gambolled gay beneath the thorn,
Or gemmed yon pebbled strand?

I see them imaged in the clouds,
On Cheviot's distant brow;
And every grove and bower enshrouds
For me but memories now.

Thus sacred thrice those scenes to me,

How thrilling how benign! Round which, as ivy round the tree, My sympathies entwine.

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