One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear, When they reach'd the hall-door, and the charger stood near;

So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung! "She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur,

They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar.

There was mounting 'mong Græmes of the Nether

by clan;

Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran :

There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

FITZ-JAMES AND RODERICK DHU.

THEN each at once his falchion drew,
Each on the ground his scabbard threw,
Each look'd to sun, and stream, and plain,
As what he ne'er might see again;
Then, foot, and point, and eye opposed,
In dubious strife they darkly closed.-
Ill fared it now with Roderick Dhu,
That on the field his targe he threw,
Whose brazen studs, and tough bull-hide,
Had death so often turn'd aside;
For, train'd abroad his arms to wield,
Fitz-James's blade was sword and shield:
He practised every pass and ward,
To feint, to thrust, to strike, to guard:
While, less expert, though stronger far,
The Gael maintain'd unequal war.
Three times in closing strife they stood,
And thrice the Saxon sword drank blood;
No stinted draught-no scanty tide!
The gushing flood the tartans dyed:
Fierce Roderick felt the fatal drain,
And shower'd his blows like wintry rain;
And as firm tower, or castle-roof,
Against the winter shower is proof,
The foe, invulnerable still,
Foil'd his wild rage by steady skill;
Till, at advantage ta'en, his brand
Forced Roderick's weapon from his hand,
And backwards borne upon the lea,
Brought the proud chieftain to his knee.
"Now yield thee, or by him who made

The world! thy heart-blood dyes my blade.”

Thy threats, thy mercy, I defy;

Let recreant yield, who fears to die."-
Like adder darting from his coil-
Like wolf that dashes through the toil-
Like mountain-cat that guards her young,
Full at Fitz-James's throat he sprung:
Received, but reck'd not of a wound,
And lock'd his arms his foeman round.
Now, gallant Saxon! hold thy own;
No maiden's hand is round thee thrown!

That desperate grasp thy frame might feel
Through bars of brass and triple steel.
They tug, they strain-down, down they go,-
The Gael above, Fitz-James below!
The chieftain's gripe his throat compress'd,
His knee was planted in his breast;
His clotted locks he backward threw,
Across his brow his hand he drew,
From blood and mist to clear his sight-
Then gleam'd aloft his dagger bright;
But hate and fury ill supplied

The stream of life's exhausted tide;
And all too late the advantage came
To turn the odds of deadly game;
For while the dagger gleam'd on high,
Reel'd soul and sense, reel'd brain and eye.
Down came the blow-but in the heath
The erring blade found bloodless sheath.-
The struggling foe may now unclasp
The fainting chief's relaxing grasp.
Unwounded from the dreadful close,
But breathless all, Fitz-James arose.

A BRIDAL.

BREATHES there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,

From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band

That knits me to thy rugged strand?
Still, as I view each well-known scene,
Think what is now, and what hath been,
Seems, as to me, of all bereft,
Sole friends thy woods and streams were left,
And thus I love them better still,
Even in extremity of ill.

By Yarrow's stream still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my wither'd cheek;
Still lay my head by Teviot stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,
The bard may draw his parting groan.

Not scorn'd like me, to Branksome hall
The minstrels came, at festive call;

Trooping they came, from near and far,
The jovial priests of mirth and war:
Alike for feast and fight prepared,
Battle and banquet both they shared.
Of late, before each martial clan,
They blew their death-note in the van,
But now, for every merry mate,
Rose the portcullis' iron grate;

They sound the pipe, they strike the string,
They dance, they revel, and they sing,
Till the rude turrets shake and ring.

Me lists not at this tide declare

The splendour of the spousal rite, How muster'd in the chapel fair

Both maid and matron, squire and knight;

Me lists not tell of owches rare,

Of mantles green, and braided hair,
And kirtles furred with miniver;
What plumage waved the altar round,
How spurs, and ringing chainlets, sound:
And hard it were for bard to speak
The changeful hue of Margaret's cheek,
That lovely hue which comes and flies,
As awe and shame alternate rise.
Some bards have sung, the ladye high
Chapel or altar came not nigh;
Nor durst the rites of spousal grace,
So much she feared each holy place.
False slanders these: I trust right well
She wrought not by forbidden spell:
For mighty words and signs have power
O'er sprites in planetary hour:
Yet scarce I praise their venturous part,
Who tamper with such dangerous art.
But this for faithful truth I say,

The ladye by the altar stood,
Of sable velvet her array,

And on her head a crimson hood,
With pearls embroidered and entwined,
Guarded with gold, with ermine lined;
A merlin sat upon her wrist,
Held by a leash of silken twist.
The spousal rites were ended soon;
"T was now the merry hour of noon,
And in the lofty arched hall
Was spread the gorgeous festival.
Steward and squire, with heedful haste,
Marshall'd the rank of every guest;
Pages, with ready blade, were there,
The mighty meal to carve and share;
O'er capon, heron-shew, and crane,
And princely peacock's gilded train,
And o'er the boar-head, garnish'd brave,
And cynget from St. Mary's wave,
O'er ptarmigan and venison,
The priest had spoke his benison.
Then rose the riot and the din,

Above, beneath, without, within!

For, from the lofty balcony,

Rung trumpet, shalm, and psaltery;

Their clanging bowls old warriors quaff'd, Loudly they spoke, and loudly laugh'd; Whisper'd young knights, in tone more mild,

To ladies fair, and ladies smiled.

The hooded hawks, high perch'd on beam,
The clamour join'd with whistling scream,
And flapp'd their wings, and shook their bells,
In concert with the stag-hounds' yells.
Round go the flasks of ruddy wine,
From Bourdeaux, Orleans, or the Rhine;
Their tasks the busy sewers ply,
And all is mirth and revelry.

THE LAST MINSTREL.

THE way was long, the wind was cold.
The minstrel was infirm and old;
His wither'd cheek and tresses gray
Seem'd to have known a better day;
The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy.
The last of all the bards was he,
Who sung of border chivalry.
For, well-a-day! their date was fled,
His tuneful brethren all were dead;
And he, neglected and oppress'd,
Wish'd to be with them, and at rest.
No more, on prancing palfrey borne,
He caroll'd, light as lark at morn;
No longer, courted and caress'd,
High placed in hall, a welcome guest,
He pour'd, to lord and lady gay,
The unpremeditated lay:

Old times were changed, old manners gone;
A stranger fill'd the Stuarts' throne;
The bigots of the iron time

Had call'd his harmless art a crime.
A wandering harper, scorn'd and poor,
He begg'd his bread from door to door;
And tuned, to please a peasant's ear,
The harp a king had loved to hear.

He pass'd where Newark's stately tower
Looks out from Yarrow's birchen bower:
The minstrel gazed with wistful eye-
No humbler resting-place was nigh.
With hesitating step, at last,
The embattled portal-arch he pass'd,
Whose ponderous grate and massy bar
Had oft roll'd back the tide of war,
But never closed the iron door
Against the desolate and poor.
The duchess marked his weary pace,
His timid mien, and reverend face,
And bade her page the menials tell,
That they should tend the old man well:
For she had known adversity,
Though born in such a high degree;
In pride of power, in beauty's bloom,
Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb.
When kindness had his wants supplied,
And the old man was gratified,
Began to rise his minstrel pride;
And he began to talk anon

Of good Earl Francis, dead and gone,
And of Earl Walter, rest him God!
A braver ne'er to battle rode;

And how full many a tale he knew,
Of the old warriors of Buccleuch ;
And, would the noble duchess deign
To listen to an old man's strain,

Though stiff his hand, his voice though weak;
He thought, even yet, the sooth to speak,
That if she loved the harp to hear,
He could make music to her ear.

The humble boon was soon obtain'd;
The aged minstrel audience gained.
But, when he reach'd the room of state,
Where she with all her ladies sate,
Perchance he wished his boon denied;
For, when to tune his harp he tried,
His trembling hand had lost the ease,
Which marks security to please;

And scenes, long past, of joy and pain,
Came wildering o'er his aged brain-
He tried to tune his harp in vain.
The pitying duchess praised its chime,
And gave him heart, and gave him time,
Till every string's according glee
Was blended into harmony.

And then, he said, he would full fain
He could recall an ancient strain,
He never thought to sing again.

It was not framed for village churls,
But for high dames and mighty earls;
He had play'd it to King Charles the good,
When he kept court in Holyrood;
And much he wish'd, yet fear'd, to try,
The long-forgotten melody.
Amid the strings his fingers stray'd,
And an uncertain warbling made,
And oft he shook his hoary head.

But when he caught the measure wild,
The old man raised his face, and smiled;
And lighten'd up his faded eye,
With all a poet's ecstasy!
In varying cadence, soft or strong,
He swept the sounding chords along :
The present scene, the future lot,
His toils, his wants, were all forgot:
Cold diffidence and age's frost,
In the full tide of song were lost;
Each blank, in faithless memory void,
The poet's glowing thought supplied;
And while his harp responsive rung,
"T was thus the latest minstrel sung.

THE TEVIOT.

SWEET Teviot, by thy silver tide,

The glaring bale-fires blaze no more! No longer steel-clad warriors ride

Along thy wild and willow'd shore; Where'er thou wind'st, by dale or hill, All, all is peaceful, all is still,

As if thy waves, since Time was born, Since first they roll'd their way to Tweed, Had only heard the shepherd's reed,

Nor started at the bugle-horn!

Unlike the tide of human time,

Which, though it change in ceaseless flow,

Retains each grief, retains each crime,

Its earliest course was doom'd to know;
And, darker as it downward bears,
Is stain'd with past and present tears!

Low as that tide has ebb'd with me,
It still reflects to Memory's eye
The hour, my brave, my only boy,

Fell by the side of great Dundee.
Why, when the volleying musket play'd
Against the bloody Highland blade,
Why was not I beside him laid!—
Enough he died the death of fame;
Enough-he died with conquering Græme.

HELLVELLYN.

I CLIME'D the dark brow of the mighty Hellvellyn, Lakes and mountains beneath me gleam'd misty and wide;

All was still, save by fits when the eagle was yelling,
And starting around me the echoes replied.
On the right, Striden-edge round the Red-tarn was
bending,

And Catchedicam its left verge was defending,
One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending,
When I mark'd the sad spot where the wanderer
had died.

Dark green was the spot mid the brown meadow heather,

Where the pilgrim of nature lay stretch'd in

decay,

Like the course of an outcast abandon'd to weather, Till the mountain-winds wasted the tenantless

clay.

Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended, For faithful in death, his mute favourite attended, The much-loved remains of her master defended, And chased the hill-fox and the raven away. How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber?

When the wind waved his garment how oft

didst thou start?

How many long days and long weeks didst thou number,

Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart? And, oh! was it meet, that-no requiem read o'er him,

No mother to weep, and no friend to deplore him, And thou, little guardian, alone stretch'd before him

Unhonour'd the pilgrim from life should depart? When a prince to the fate of the peasant has yielded,

The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted

hall;

With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded, And pages stand mute by the canopied pall: Through the courts, at deep midnight, the torches are gleaming,

In the proudly-arch'd chapel the banners are beaming,

Far adown the long aisle sacred music is

streaming,

Lamenting a chief of the people should fall.

But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature,

To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb;

When, wilder'd he drops from some cliff huge in stature,

And draws his last sob by the side of his dam. And more stately thy couch by this desert lake lying,

Thy obsequies sung by the gray plover flying,
With one faithful friend to witness thy dying,
In the arms of Hellvellyn and Catchedicam.

A SCENE IN BRANKSOME TOWER.

MANY a valiant knight is here;
But he, the chieftain of them all,
His sword hangs rusting on the wall,
Beside his broken spear!

Bards long shall tell,

How Lord Walter fell!
When startled burghers fled, afar,
The furies of the Border war;
When the streets of high Dunedin
Saw lances gleam, and falchions redden,
And heard the slogan's deadly yell-
Then the Chief of Branksome fell!

Can piety the discord heal,

Or stanch the death-feud's enmity?
Can Christian lore, can patriot zeal,
Can love of blessed charity?
No! vainly to each holy shrine,

In mutual pilgrimage, they drew;
Implored, in vain, the grace divine

For chiefs, their own red falchions slew, While Cessford owns the rule of Car,

While Ettrick boasts the line of Scott, The slaughter'd chiefs, the mortal jar, The havoc of the feudal war,

Shall never, never be forgot!

In sorrow o'er Lord Walter's bier,
The warlike foresters had bent;
And many a flower and many a tear,

Old Teviot's maids and matrons lent:
But, o'er her warrior's bloody bier,
The Layde dropp'd nor sigh nor tear!
Vengeance, deep-brooding o'er the slain,
Had lock'd the source of softer wo;
And burning pride, and high disdain,
Forbade the rising tear to flow;
Until, amid his sorrowing clan,

Her son lisp'd from the nurse's knee"And, if I live to be a man,

My father's death revenged shall be!" Then fast the mother's tears did seek To dew the infant's kindling cheek.

FAREWELL TO THE MUSE.

ENCHANTRESS, farewell! who so oft has decoy'd me, At the close of the evening through woodlands

to roam,

Where the forester, lated, with wonder espied me Explore the wild scenes he was quitting for home. Farewell! and take with thee thy numbers wild speaking,

The language alternate of rapture and wo; Oh! none but some lover, whose heartstrings are breaking

The pang that I feel at our parting can know. Each joy thou couldst double, and when there

came sorrow,

Or pale disappointment to darken my way, What voice was like thine, that could sing of tomorrow,

Till forgot in the strain was the grief of to-day! But when friends drop around us in life's weary waning,

The grief, queen of numbers, thou canst not

assuage;

Nor the gradual estrangement of those yet re

maining,

The languor of pain, and the chillness of age. "T was thou that once taught me, in accents bewailing,

To sing how a warrior lay stretch'd on the plain; And a maiden hung o'er him with aid unavailing, And held to his lips the cold goblet in vain: As vain those enchantments, O queen of wild numbers,

To a bard when the reign of his fancy is o'er, And the quick pulse of feeling in apathy slumbers,Farewell then, enchantress! I meet thee no more!

MELROSE ABBEY.

Ir thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,

Go visit it by the pale moonlight:
For the gay beams of lightsome day

Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray.

When the broken arches are black in night,
And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When the cold light's uncertain shower
Streams on the ruin'd central tower;
When buttress and buttress, alternately,
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;
When silver edges the imagery.

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;
When distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave;
Then go !-but go alone the while-
Then view St. David's ruin'd pile!
And, home returning, soothly swear,
Was never scene so sad and fair!

JAMES MONTGOMERY is the most popular of the religious poets who have written in England since the time of CowPER, and he is more exclusively the poet of devotion than even the bard of Olney. Probably no writer is less indebted to a felicitous selection of subjects, since the themes of nearly all his longer productions are unpleasing and unpoetical; but for half a century he has been slowly and constantly increasing in reputation, and he has now a name which will not be forgotten, while taste and the religious sentiment exist together.

Mr. MONTGOMERY is the oldest son of a Moravian clergyman, and was born at Irvine, in Scotland, on the fourth of November, 1771. At a very early age he was placed by his parents, who had determined to educate him for the Moravian ministry, at one of the seminaries of their church, where he remained ten years. At the end of this period, he decided not to study the profession to which he had been destined, and was in consequence placed with a shopkeeper in Yorkshire. Ill satisfied with his employment, he abandoned it at the end of a few months, and when but sixteen made his first appearance in London, with a manuscript volume of poems, of which he vainly endeavoured to procure the publication. In 1792 he went to Sheffield, where he was soon after engaged as a writer for a weekly gazette published by a Mr. Gales, and in 1794, on the flight of his employer from England to avoid a political prosecution, he himself became publisher and editor, and changing the name of the paper to "The Iris," conducted it with much taste, ability, and moderation. It was still, however, obnoxious to the government, and Mr. MONTGOMERY was prosecuted for printing in it a song commemorative of the destruction of the Bastile, fined twenty pounds, and imprisoned three months in York Castle. On resuming his editorial duties he carefully avoided partisan politics, but after a brief period he was arrested for an offensive passage in an account which he gave of a riot in Sheffield, and was again imprisoned. It was during

10

his second imprisonment, that he wrote his Prison Amusements, which appeared in 1797. From this time his poems followed each other in rapid succession. In 1805 he published the Ocean, in 1806 the Wanderer of Switzerland, in 1810 the West Indies, in 1812 the World before the Flood, in 1819 Greenland, in 1822 Songs of Zion, in 1827 the Pelican Island, and in 1835 A Poet's Portfolio, or Minor Poems. Beside these, he has written Songs to Foreign Music, and several smaller volumes of miscellaneous pieces. Mr. MONTGOMERY had published but few of these works before his reputation was established as a poet of a high order. The Wanderer of Switzerland was severely criticised in the Edinburgh Review, and the West Indies was received by the critics with less favour than it merited. Greenland was more popular than his earlier works; the subject more in unison with his devotional cast of thought; and the poem is full of graphic descriptions, and rich and varied imagery. The patient and earnest labours of the Moravian missionaries are described in it with a sympathetic and genuine enthusiasm.

The minor poems of Mr. MONTGOMERY, his little songs and cabinet pieces, will be the most frequently read, and the most generally admired. They have the antique simplicity of pious GEORGE WITHERS, a natural unaffected earnestness, joined to a pure and poetical diction, which will secure to them a permanent place in English literature. The character of his genius is essentially lyrical; he has no dramatic power, and but little skill in narrative. His longest and most elaborate works, though they contain beautiful and touching reflections, and descriptions equally distinguished for minuteness, fidelity, and beauty, are without incident or method; but his shorter pieces are full of devotion to the Creator, sympathy with the suffering, and a cheerful, hopeful philosophy.

Mr. MONTGOMERY is now seventy-four years of age. He resides in Sheffield, where he is regarded by all classes with respect and af