He spurr'd his steed, he couch'd his lance, As motionless as rocks, that bide The wrath of the advancing tide, - The Bruce stood fast. - Each breast beat high, His course SCOTT. EPITAPH ON AN INFANT. ERE sin could blight, or sorrow fade, COLERIDGE. A WINTER NIGHT. A WINTER night! the stormy wind is high, To tend his fleecy charge in drifted snow; And the poor homeless, houseless child of woe Sinks down, perchance, in dumb despair to die! Happy the fire-side student; happier still The social circle round the blazing hearth,- BARTON. FUNERAL HYMN. BROTHER, thou art gone before us, From the burden of the flesh, And from care and fear releas'd; The toilsome way thou st travell❜d o'er, But Christ has taught thy languid feet Thou'rt sleeping now, like Lazarus, Where the wicked cease from troubling, Sin can never taint thee now, Nor doubt thy faith assail, Nor thy meek trust in Jesus Christ And there thou'rt sure to meet the good, "Earth to earth," and "dust to dust," Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest. And when the Lord shall summon us, May we, untainted by the world, As sure a welcome find; May each, like thee, depart in peace, To be a glorious guest, Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest. MILMAN. THE TRAVELLER AT THE SOURCE OF IN sunset's light, o'er Afric thrown, The cradle of that mighty birth So long a hidden thing to earth! He heard its life's first murmuring sound, A music sought, but never found, By kings and warriors gone; He listen'd-and his heart beat high That was the song of victory! The rapture of a conqueror's mood Though stillness lay, with eve's last smile, A remarkable description of feelings thus fluctuating from triumph to despondency is given in Bruce's Abyssinian travels. The buoyant exultation of his spirits on arriving at the source of the Nile was almost immediately succeeded by a gloom, which he thus portrays: "I was, at that very moment, in possession of what had for many years been the principal object of my ambition and wishes; indifference, which, from the usual infirmity of human nature, follows, at least for a time, complete enjoyment, had taken place of it. The marsh, and the fountains of the Nile, upon comparison with the rise of many of our rivers, became now a trifling object in my sight. I remembered that magnificent scene in my own native country, where the Tweed, Clyde, and Annan rise in one hill. I began, in my sorrow, to treat the inquiry about the source of the Nile as a violent effort of a distempered fancy." Night came with stars—across his soul Breath'd from the thought, so swift to fall No more than this! what seem'd it now A thousand streams of lovelier flow Whence, far o'er waste and ocean track, They call'd him back to many a glade, Where brightly through the beechen shade. They call'd him, with their sounding waves, Back to his father's hills and graves. But, darkly mingling with the thought Rose up a fearful vision, fraught The Arab's lance, the desert's gloom, The whirling sands, the red simoom! Where was the glow of power and pride? His alter'd heart within him died |