While the sun journeys down the western sky,

Along the green sward, marked with Roman mound, Beneath the blithesome shepherd's watchful eye,

The cheerful lambkins dance and frisk around.

Now is the time for those who wisdom love,

Who love to walk in Virtue's flowery road,
Along the lovely paths of spring to rove,
And follow Nature up to Nature's God.

Thus Zoroaster studied Nature's laws;

Thus Socrates, the wisest of mankind;

Thus heaven-taught Plato traced the Almighty cause, And left the wondering multitude behind.

Thus Ashley gathered academic bays;

Thus gentle Thomson, as the seasons roll, Taught them to sing the great Creator's praise,

And bear their poet's name from pole to pole.

Thus have I walked along the dewy lawn;

My frequent foot the blooming wild hath worn; Before the lark I've sung the beauteous dawn,

And gathered health from all the gales of morn.

And, even when winter chilled the aged year,
I wandered lonely o'er the hoary plain:
Though frosty Boreas warned me to forbear,
Boreas, with all his tempests, warned in vain.

Then, sleep my nights, and quiet blessed my days;
I feared no loss, my mind was all my store;
No anxious wishes e'er disturbed my ease;

Heaven gave content and health-I asked no more.

Now, Spring returns; but not to me returns
The vernal joy my better years have known,
Dim in my breast life's dying taper burns,

And all the joys of life with health are flown.

Starting and shivering in the inconstant wind,
Meager and pale, the ghost of what I was,
Beneath some blasted tree I lie reclined,

And count the silent moments as they pass:

The winged moments, whose unstaying speed
No art can stop, or in their course arrest;
Whose flight shall shortly count me with the dead,

And lay me down in peace with them at rest.

Oft morning dreams presage approaching fate;
And morning dreams, as poets tell, are true;
Led by pale ghosts, I enter Death's dark gate,
And bid the realms of life and light adieu.

I hear the helpless wail, the shriek of woe;
I see the muddy wave, the dreary shore,
The sluggish streams that slowly sleep below,
Which mortals visit, and return no more.

Farewell, ye blooming fields! ye cheerful plains!
Enough for me the church-yard's lonely mound,
Where melancholy with still silence reigns,

And the rank grass waves o'er the cheerless ground.

There let me wander at the shut of eve,

When sleep sits dewy on the laborer's eyes;

The world and all its busy follies leave,

And talk with Wisdom where my Daphne lies.

There let me sleep, forgotten in the clay,

When death shall shut these weary, aching eyes; Rest in the hopes of an eternal day,

Till the long night is gone, and the last morn arise.

THE HUS BAUD MAY.

(FROM A LONG POEM ENTITLED "LOCHLEVEN.")

"How blest the man, who, in these peaceful plains,
Ploughs his paternal field; far from the noise,
The care and bustle of a busy world!
All in the sacred, sweet, sequestered vale
Of solitude, the secret primrose path

Of rural life he dwells; and with him dwells
Peace and content, twins of the sylvan shade,
And all the graces of the golden age.

Such is Agricola, the wise, the good,

By nature formed for the calm retreat,

The silent path of life. Learned, but not fraught
With self-importance, as the starched fool
Who challenges respect by solemn face,
By studied accent, and high-sounding phrase,
Enamored of the shade, but not morose,
Politeness raised in courts by frigid rules
With him spontaneous grows. Not books alone,
But man his study, and the better part;
To tread the ways of virtue, and to act
The various scenes of life with God's applause.

JOHN LOGAN.

1748—1788.

JOHN LOGAN was born at Soutra, in the parish of Fala, Mid Lothian. His father, a small farmer, educated him for the church, and, after he had obtained a license to preach, he distinguished himself so much for pulpit eloquence, that he was appointed one of the ministers of South Leith. He published some poems in 1781, which were well received, and in 1783 he produced the tragedy of Runnimede, founded in the signing of the Magna Charta. His parishoners were opposed to such an exercise of his talents, and unfortunately Logan had lapsed into irregular and dissipated habits. The consequence was, that he resigned his charge on receiving a small annuity, and proceeded to London, where he resided till his death, in 1788.

One act in Logan's life casts a shade over his literary character, we refer to his editorial supervision of the poems of his friend Michael Bruce. He left out several pieces by Bruce, and, as he states in his preface, "to make up a miscellany," poems by different authors were inserted. Many of these he claimed, and published afterwards as his own. With respect to the best of the disputed pieces, "The Ode to the Cuckoo," whose "magical stanzas of picture, melody and sentiment," as D'Israeli calls them, have been so much admired, we think there is sufficient evidence to show that it was written by Bruce. It is unfavorable for the case of Logan that he retained some of the manuscripts of Bruce, and his conduct through the whole affair was careless and unsatisfactory.

That Logan was a man of genius, both his published sermons, which have been exceedingly popular, and his poems, sufficiently testify.