OFT have I caught, upon a fitful breeze,
Fragments of far-off melodies,
With ear not coveting the whole,
A part so charmed the pensive soul.
While a dark storm before my sight
Was yielding, on a mountain height
Loose vapours have I watched, that won
Prismatic colours from the sun;

Nor felt a wish that heaven would show
The image of its perfect bow.
What need, then, of these finished Strains?
Away with counterfeit Remains!
An abbey in its lone recess,

A temple of the wilderness,
Wrecks though they be, announce with
feeling

The majesty of honest dealing.
Spirit of Ossian ! if imbound

In language thou may'st yet be found,
If aught (intrusted to the pen
Or floating on the tongues of men,
Albeit shattered and impaired)
Subsist thy dignity to guard,

In concert with memorial claim
Of old grey stone, and high-born name
That cleaves to rock or pillared cave
Where moans the blast, or beats the wave,
Let Truth, stern arbitress of all,
Interpret that Original,

And for presumptuous wrongs atone;-
Authentic words be given, or none!
Time is not blind;-yet He, who spares
Pyramid pointing to the stars,
Hath preyed with ruthless appetite
On all that marked the primal flight
Of the poetic ecstasy

Into the land of mystery.
No tongue is able to rehearse
One measure, Orpheus! of thy verse;
Musæus, stationed with his lyre
Supreme among the Elysian quire,
Is, for the dwellers upon earth,
Mute as a lark ere morning's birth.
Why grieve for these, though past away
The music, and extinct the lay?
When thousands, by severer doom,
Full early to the silent tomb

Have sunk, at Nature's call; or strayed
From hope and promise, self-betrayed;
The garland withering on their brows;
Stung with remorse for broken vows;

Frantic-else how might they rejoice?

And friendless, by their own sad choice! Hail, Bards of mightier grasp

on you

I chiefly call, the chosen Few,
Who cast not off the acknowledged guide,
Who faltered not, nor turned aside;
Whose lofty genius could survive
Privation, under sorrow thrive;
In whom the fiery Muse revered
The symbol of a snow-white beard,
Bedewed with meditative tears

Dropped from the lenient cloud of years.

Brothers in soul! though distant times Produced you nursed in various climes, Ye, when the orb of life had waned, A plenitude of love retained: Hence, while in you each sad regret By corresponding hope was met, Ye lingered among human kind, Sweet voices for the passing wind, Departing sunbeams, loth to stop, Though smiling on the last hill top ! Such to the tender-hearted maid Even ere her joys begin to fade; Such, haply, to the rugged chief By fortune crushed, or tamed by grief; Appears, on Morven's lonely shore, Dim-gleaming through imperfect lore, The Son of Fingal; such was blind Mæonides of ampler mind; Such Milton, to the fountain head Of glory by Urania led !

XXIX

CAVE OF STAFFA

AFTER THE CROWD HAD DEPARTED

THANKS for the lessons of this Spot-fit school

For the presumptuous thoughts that would assign

Mechanic laws to agency divine;

And, measuring heaven by earth, would overrule

Infinite Power. The pillared vestibule, Expanding yet precise, the roof embowed, Might seem designed to humble man, when proud

Of his best workmanship by plan and tool. Down-bearing with his whole Atlantic weight

Of tide and tempest on the Structure's base, And flashing to that Structure's topmost height,

Ocean has proved its strength, and of its

grace

In calms is conscious, finding for his freight

Of softest music some reponsive place.

XXVIII

CAVE OF STAFFA1

WE saw, but surely, in the motley crowd,
Not One of us has felt the far-famed sight;
How could we feel it? each the other's blight,
Hurried and hurrying, volatile and loud.
O for those motions only that invite
The Ghost of Fingal to his tuneful Cave
By the breeze entered, and wave after wave
Softly embosoming the timid light!
And by one Votary who at will might stand
Gazing and take into his mind and heart,
With undistracted reverence, the effect
Of those proportions where the almighty
hand

That made the worlds, the sovereign
Architect,

Has deigned to work as if with human Art! 1 See Note.

ON to Iona!-What can she afford
To us save matter for a thoughtful sigh,
Heaved over ruin with stability
In urgent contrast? To diffuse the WORD
(Thy Paramount, mighty Nature! and
Time's Lord)

Her Temples rose, 'mid pagan gloom; but why,

Even for a moment, has our verse deplored Their wrongs, since they fulfilled their destiny?

And when, subjected to a common doom Of mutability, those far-famed Piles

Shall disappear from both the sister Isles, Iona's Saints, forgetting not past days, Garlands shall wear of amaranthine bloom, While heaven's vast sea of voices chants their praise.1

1 See Note.

XXXIV

THE BLACK STONES OF IONA

See Martin's Voyage among the Western Isies. HERE on their knees men swore: the stones were black,

Black in the people's minds and words, yet they

Were at that time, as now, in colour grey. But what is colour, if upon the rack

Of conscience souls are placed by deeds that lack

Concord with oaths? What differ night and day

Then, when before the Perjured on his way Hell opens, and the heavens in vengeance

XXXV

HOMEWARD we turn. Isle of Columba's Cell,

Where Christian piety's soul - cheering spark

(Kindled from Heaven between the light and dark

Of time) shone like the morning-star, farewell!

And fare thee well, to Fancy visible, Remote St. Kilda, lone and loved sea-mark For many a voyage made in her swift bark, When with more hues than in the rainbow dwell

Thou a mysterious intercourse dost hold, Extracting from clear skies and air serene, And out of sun-bright waves, a lucid veil, That thickens, spreads, and, mingling fold with fold,

Makes known, when thou no longer canst be seen,

Thy whereabout, to warn the approaching sail.

XXXVI

GREENOCK

Per me si va nella Città dolente.

We have not passed into a doleful City, We who were led to-day down a grim dell, By some too boldly named "the Jaws of Hell:"

Where be the wretched ones, the sights for pity?

These crowded streets resound no plaintive

ditty:

As from the hive where bees in summer dwell,

Sorrow seems here excluded; and that knell,

It neither damps the gay, nor checks the

witty.

Alas! too busy Rival of old Tyre,

XXXVII

Mosgiel was thus pointed out to me by a young man on the top of the coach on my way from Glasgow to Kilmarnock. It is remarkable that, though Burns lived some time here, and during much the most productive period of his poetical life, he nowhere adverts to the splendid prospects stretching towards the sea and bounded by the peaks of Arran on one part, which in clear weather he must have had daily before his eyes. In one of his poetical effusions he speaks of describing "fair Nature's face" as a privilege on which he sets a high value; nevertheless, natural appearances rarely take a lead in his poetry. It is as a human being, eminently sensitive and intelligent, and not as a poet, clad in his priestly robes and carrying the ensigns of sacerdotal office, that he interests and affects us. Whether he speaks of rivers, hills, and woods, it is not so much on account of the properties with which they are absolutely endowed, as relatively to local patriotic remembrances and associations, or as they ministered to personal feelings, especially those of love, whether happy or otherwise ;-yet it is not always so. Soon after we had passed Mosgiel Farm we crossed the Ayr, murmuring and wind. ing through a narrow woody hollow. His line"Auld hermit Ayr strays through his woods"— came at once to my mind with Irwin, Lugar, Ayr, and Doon,-Ayrshire streams over which he breathes a sigh as being unnamed in song; and surely his own attempts to make them known were as successful as his heart could desire. "THERE!" said a Stripling, pointing with meet pride

Towards a low roof with green trees half concealed,

"Is Mosgiel Farm; and that's the very field Where Burns ploughed up the Daisy."

lay two casts of faces, one of the Duchess of Devonshire, so noted in her day; and the other of Mr. Pitt, taken after his death, a ghastly resemblance, as these things always are, even when taken from the living subject, and more ghastly in this instance from the peculiarity of the features. The heedless and apparently neglectful manner in which the faces of these two persons were left-the one so distinguished in London Society, and the other upon whose counsels and public conduct, during a most momentous period, depended the fate of this great Empire and perhaps of all Europe-afforded a lesson to which the dullest of casual visitors could scarcely be insensible. It touched me the more because I had so often seen Mr. Pitt upon his own ground at Cambridge and upon the floor of the House of Commons.

STRETCHED on the dying Mother's lap, lies dead

Her new-born Babe; dire ending of bright

hope!

But Sculpture here, with the divinest scope Of luminous faith, heavenward hath raised that head

So patiently; and through one hand has spread

A touch so tender for the insensate Child(Earth's lingering love to parting reconciled,

Brief parting, for the spirit is all but fled)— That we, who contemplate the turns of life Through this still medium, are consoled and cheered;

Feel with he Mother, think the severed
Wife

Is less to be lamented than revered;
And own that Art, triumphant over strife
And pain, hath powers to Eternity en-
deared.

XXXIX

MONUMENT OF MRS. HOWARD
by Nollekens

IN WETHERAL CHURCH, NEAR CORBY, ON THE
BANKS OF THE EDEN

Before this monument was put up in the Church at Wetheral, I saw it in the sculptor's studio. Nollekens, who, by the bye, was a strange and grotesque figure that interfered much with one's admiration of his works, showed me at the same time the various models in clay which he had made, one after another, of the Mother and her Infant the improvement on each was surprising; and how so much grace, beauty, and tenderness had come out of such a head I was sadly puzzled to conceive. Upon a window-seat in his parlour 1 See Note.