The sleeping dust, stern death. How reconcile
With truth, or with each other, decked remains
Of a once warm abode, and that new pile,
For the departed, built with curious pains
And mausolean pomp? Yet here they stand
Together, 'mid trim walks and artful bowers,
To be looked down upon by ancient hills,
That, for the living and the dead, demand
And prompt a harmony of genuine powers;
Concord that elevates the mind, and stills.

"REST AND BE THANKFUL"

At the Head of Glencroe.

DOUBLING and doubling with laborious walk,
Who, that has gained at length the wished-for height,
This brief this simple wayside call can slight,
And rests not thankful? Whether cheered by talk
With some loved friend, or by the unseen hawk
Whistling to clouds and sky-born streams, that shine
At the sun's outbreak, as with light divine,
Ere they descend to nourish root and stalk
Of valley flowers. Nor, while the limbs repose,
Will we forget that, as the fowl can keep
Absolute stillness, poised aloft in air,

And fishes front, unmoved, the torrent's sweep,-
So may the soul, through powers that faith bestows,
Win rest, and ease, and peace, with bliss that angels
share.

HIGHLAND HUT

SEE what gay wild-flowers deck this earth-built cot,
Whose smoke, forth issuing whence and how it may,
Shines in the greeting of the sun's first ray
Like wreaths of vapour without stain or blot.

The limpid mountain-rill avoids it not;

And why shouldst thou? If rightly trained and bred,
Humanity is humble, finds no spot

Which her Heaven-guided feet refuse to tread.
The walls are cracked, sunk is the flowery roof,
Undressed the pathway leading to the door;
But love, as Nature loves, the lonely poor;
Search, for their worth, some gentle heart wrong-
proof,

Meek, patient, kind, and, were its trials fewer,
Belike less happy. Stand no more aloof!

THE HIGHLAND BROACH

The exact resemblance which the old Broach (still in use, though rarely met with, among the Highlanders) bears to the Roman Fibula must strike every one, and concurs with the plaid and kilt to recall to mind the communication which the ancient Romans had with this remote country.

IF to tradition faith be due,

And echoes from old verse speak true,
Ere the meek saint, Columba, bore
Glad tidings to Iona's shore,
No common light of nature blessed
The mountain region of the west,
A land where gentle manners ruled
O'er men in dauntless virtues schooled,
That raised, for centuries, a bar
Impervious to the tide of war:

Yet peaceful arts did entrance gain
Where haughty force had striven in vain;
And 'mid the works of skilful hands,
By wanderers brought from foreign lands
And various climes, was not unknown
The clasp that fixed the Roman gown ;
The fibula, whose shape, I ween,
Still in the Highland broach is seen,

The silver broach of massy frame,
Worn at the breast of some great dame
On road or path, or at the door
Of fern-thatched hut on heathy moor:
But delicate of yore its mould.
And the material finest gold;
As might beseem the fairest fair,
Whether she graced a royal chair,
Or shed, within a vaulted hall,
No fancied lustre on the wall
Where shields of mighty heroes hung,
While Fingal heard what Ossian sung.

The heroic age expired, it slept
Deep in its tomb: the bramble crept
O'er Fingal's hearth; the grassy sod
Grew on the floors his sons had trod :
Malvina where art thou? Their state
The noblest-born must abdicate;
The fairest, while with fire and sword
Come spoilers, horde impelling horde,
Must walk the sorrowing mountains, drest
By ruder hands in homelier vest.
Yet still the female bosom lent,
And loved to borrow, ornament;

Still was its inner world a place
Reached by the dews of heavenly grace;
Still pity to this last retreat

Clove fondly; to his favourite seat
Love wound his way by soft approach,
Beneath a massier Highland broach.

When alternations came of rage

Yet fiercer, in a darker age;

And feuds, where, clan encountering clan, The weaker perished to a man ;

For maid and mother, when despair

Might else have triumphed, baffling prayer, One small possession lacked not power, Provided in a calmer hour,

To meet such need as might befall,
Roof, raiment, bread, or burial:
For woman, even of tears bereft,
The hidden silver Broach was left.

As generations come and go,

Their arts, their customs, ebb and flow;
Fate, fortune, sweep strong powers away,
And feeble, of themselves, decay;
What poor abodes the heirloom hide,
In which the castle once took pride!
Tokens, once kept as boasted wealth,
If saved at all, are saved by stealth.
Lo! ships, from seas by nature barred,
Mount along ways by man prepared ;
And in far-stretching vales, whose streams
Seek other seas, their canvas gleams.
Lo! busy towns spring up, on coasts
Thronged yesterday by airy ghosts;
Soon, like a lingering star forlorn
Among the novelties of morn,
While young delights on old encroach,
Will vanish the last Highland broach.

But when, from out their viewless bed,
Like vapours, years have rolled and spread;
And this poor verse, and worthier lays,
Shall yield no light of love or praise;
Then, by the spade, or cleaving plough,
Or torrent from the mountain's brow,
Or whirlwind, reckless what his might
Entombs, or forces into light;
Blind chance, a volunteer ally,
That oft befriends antiquity,

And clears oblivion from reproach,

May render back the Highland broach.1

1 How much the Broach is sometimes prized by persons in humble stations may be gathered from an occurrence mentioned to me by a female friend. She had had an opportunity of benefiting a poor old woman in her own hut, who, wishing to make a return,

THE BROWNIE

Upon a small island, not far from the head of Loch Lomond, are some remains of an ancient building, which was for several years the abode of a solitary Individual, one of the last survivors of the clan of Macfarlane, once powerful in that neighbourhood. Passing along the shore opposite this island in the year 1814, the Author learned these particulars, and that this person then living there had acquired the appellation of The Brownie. See " The Brownie's Cell," to which the following is a sequel.

"How disappeared he?" Ask the newt and toad;
Ask of his fellow-men, and they will tell
How he was found, cold as an icicle,
Under an arch of that forlorn abode ;

Where he, unpropped, and by the gathering flood
Of years hemmed round, had dwelt, prepared to try
Privation's worst extremities, and die

With no one near save the omnipresent God.
Verily so to live was an awful choice,

A choice that wears the aspect of a doom;
But in the mould of mercy all is cast
For souls familiar with the eternal voice;
And this forgotten taper to the last

Drove from itself, we trust, all frightful gloom.

TO THE PLANET VENUS, AN EVENING

STAR

Composed at Loch Lomond.

THOUGH joy attend thee orient at the birth
Of dawn, it cheers the lofty spirit most

To watch thy course when daylight, fled from earth,
In the grey sky hath left his lingering ghost,

said to her daughter in Erse, in a tone of plaintive earnestness, "I would give anything I have, but I hope she does not wish for my Broach!" and, uttering these words, she put her hand upon the Broach which fastened her kerchief, and which, she imagined, had attracted the eye of her benefactress.