THE SOLDIER'S DREAM. OUR bugles sang truce- for the night-cloud had lower'd, And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky; And thousands had sunk on the ground overpower'd, The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die. When reposing that night on my pallet of straw, Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array, To the home of my fathers, that welcom'd me back. I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft, And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung. Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore, From my home and my weeping friends never to part ; My little ones kiss'd me a thousand times o'er, Stay, stay with us,-rest, thou art weary and worn; And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay; But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn, And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away. LINES WRITTEN ON VISITING A SCENE IN ARGYLESHIRE. AT the silence of twilight's contemplative hour, I have mused in a sorrowful mood, On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom the bower, ON VISITING A SCENE IN ARGYLESHIRE. 79 Yet wandering, I found on my ruinous walk, By the dial-stone aged and green, One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk, To mark where a garden had been. Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race, The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall, But patience shall never depart! Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright, In the days of delusion by fancy combined With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight, Abandon my soul, like a dream of the night, And leave but a desert behind. 80 ON VISITING A SCENE IN ARGYLESHIRE. Be hush'd, my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns When the faint and the feeble deplore ; Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems Through the perils of chance, and the scowl of disdain, May thy front be unalter'd, thy courage elate! Yea! even the name I have worshipp'd in vain Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance again : To bear is to conquer our fate. |