And ill betide the faithless yew!

The stag bounds scatheless o'er the dew, And gallant Keeldar's life-blood true

Has drench'd the grey-goose wing.

The noble hound—he dies, he dies, Death, death has glazed his fixed eyes, Stiff on the bloody heath he lies,

Without a groan or quiver.

Now day may break and bugle sound, And whoop and hollow ring around, And o'er his couch the stag may bound, But Keeldar sleeps forever.

Dilated nostrils, staring eyes,

Mark the poor palfrey's mute surprise,
He knows not that his comrade dies,
Nor what is death-but still

His aspect hath expression drear
Of grief and wonder, mix'd with fear,
Like startled children when they hear
Some mystic tale of ill.

But he that bent the fatal bow,
Can well the sum of evil know,
And o'er his favourite, bending low,
In speechless grief recline;

Can think he hears the senseless clay,
In unreproachful accents say,

"The hand that took

my life away,

Dear master, was it thine?

"And if it be, the shaft be bless'd,
Which sure some erring aim address'd,
Since in your service prized, caress'd
I in your service die ;

And you may have a fleeter hound,
To match the dun-deer's merry bound,
But by your couch will ne'er be found
So true a guard as I."

And to his last stout Percy rued
The fatal chance, for when he stood
'Gainst fearful odds in deadly feud,
And fell amid the fray,

E'en with his dying voice he cried,
"Had Keeldar but been at my side,
Your treacherous ambush had been spied-
I had not died to-day!"

Remembrance of the erring bow

Long since had join'd the tides which flow, Conveying human bliss and woe

Down dark oblivion's river;

But Art can Time's stern doom arrest,
And snatch his spoil from Lethe's breast,
And, in her Cooper's colours drest,

The scene shall live forever.

POEMS PRINTED IN LOCKHART'S

BIOGRAPHY.*

* Except one or two which have been received into the

JUVENILE LINES.

FROM VIRGIL.

"The autobiography tells us that his translations in verse from Horace and Virgil were often approved by Dr. Adam. One of these little pieces, written in a weak boyish scrawl, within pencilled marks still visible, had been carefully preserved by his mother; it was found folded up in a cover, inscribed by the old lady-"My Walter's first lines, 1782."-LOCKHART, Life of Scott, vol. i. p. 129.

IN awful ruins Etna thunders nigh,

And sends in pitchy whirlwinds to the sky
Black clouds of smoke, which still as they aspire,
From their dark sides there bursts the glowing

fire;

At other times huge balls of fire are toss'd,
That lick the stars, and in the smoke are lost;
Sometimes the mount, with vast convulsions torn,
Emits huge rocks, which instantly are borne
With loud explosions to the starry skies,
The stones made liquid as the huge mass flies,
Then back again with greater weight recoils,
While Ætna thundering from the bottom boils.

1782.-ÆTAT. 11.