Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face;

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong:
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are
fresh and strong.

To humbler functions, awful power!
I call thee: I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh! let my weakness have an end!
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;

The confidence of reason give ;

And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live

SONNET TO MILTON.

MILTON, thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh, raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart:

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.

ODE ON THE INTIMATIONS OF IMMOR-
TALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY
CHILDHOOD.*

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it has been of yore ;-
Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more!

The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose,—

The moon doth with delight

Look around her when the heavens are bare ;
Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief :
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,-
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

It must be borne in mind that what is here given is only an extract from the Ode.

And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday ;—
Thou child of joy

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ;
My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
While the earth itself is adorning,
This sweet May morning;

And the children are pulling,

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm :-
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear !

-But there's a tree, of many one,
A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that's gone :
The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere his setting,

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;

The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid

Ìs on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

(1771-1832.)

BORN in Edinburgh. Educated for the law, and called to the bar in 1792, but soon afterwards devoted himself almost exclusively to literature. Scott's first great work (The Lay of the Last Minstrel) met with immediate and great success; and the pecuniary results of his subsequent literary efforts were such as enabled him to make Abbotsford a residence worthy of a Scotch laird. He entered into partnership with the printing firm of Ballantyne & Co., which became bankrupt in 1825, with debts amounting to considerably more than 100,000, for the whole of which Scott was liable. When fifty-five years old, he set to work vigorously to clear off, by his pen, this immense debt, and very materially diminished it during the remaining five or six years of his life. It was afterwards completely liquidated by the profits on the sale of his works. In the midst of toil and anxiety, Scott was struck with paralysis (1830), and in the hope of deriving benefit from a change of scene, he spent some months of 1831 in Italy. On his way home paralysis again struck him. His earnest wish now was to die, surrounded by his children, at his beloved Abbotsford. This wish was realized on the 21st of September, 1832, and five days later his body was reposing by the side of his wife's in Dryburgh Abbey.

Scott's works are very numerous. His chief poems are The Lay of the Last Minstrel; Marmion; The Lady of the Lake.

His most celebrated prose works are Waverley; Guy Mannering; The Antiquary; The Heart of Midlothian; Old Mortality ; Ivanhoe; Kenilworth; Peveril of the Peak; Tales of a Grandfather: Life of Napoleon; etc.

THE LOVE OF COUNTRY.

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 concentred 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.