But though enwrapt in noise and smoke,

They ne'er can heal his peace when broke;
His fears arise, he sighs again

For solitude on rural plain;

Even there his wishes all convene

To bear him to his noise again.

Thus tortur'd, rack'd, and sore opprest,

He constant hunts, but never finds his rest.
Antistrophe. Oh exercise! thou healing power,

The toiling rustic's chiefest dower;
Be thou with parent virtue join'd
To quell the tumults of the mind;
Then man as much of joy can share
From ruffian winter, bleakly bare,
As from the pure ethereal blaze
That wantons in the summer rays;
The humble cottage then can bring
Content; the comfort of a king;
And gloomy mortals wish no more
For wealth and idleness to make them poor.

ODE TO DISAPPOINTMENT.

THOU joyless fiend, life's constant foe,
Sad source of care and spring of woe,
Soft pleasure's hard control;

Her gayest haunts for ever nigh;

Stern mistress of the secret sigh,

That swells the murm'ring soul.

Why haunt'st thou me through deserts drear?
With grief-swoln sounds why wound my ear,
Denied to pity's aid?

Thy visage wan did e'er I woo,
Or at thy feet in homage bow,

Or court thy sullen shade.

Even now enchanted scenes abound,
Elysian glories strew the ground,
To lure th' astonish'd eyes;

Now horrors, hell, and furies reign,
And desolate the fairy scene
Of all its gay disguise.

The passions, at thy urgent call,
Our reasons and our sense enthrall
In frenzy's fetters strong.

And now despair with lurid eye

Doth meagre poverty descry,
Subdu'd by famine long.

The lover flies the haunts of day,
In gloomy woods and wilds to stray,
There shuns his Jessy's scorn :

Sad sisters of the sighing grove
Attune their lyres to hapless love,
Dejected and forlorn.

Yet hope undaunted wears thy chain, And smiles amidst the growing pain, Nor fears thy sad dismay;

Unaw'd by power her fancy flies

From earth's dim orb to purer skies, Realms of endless day.

DIRGE.

THE waving yew or cypress wreath
In vain bequeath the mighty tear;
In vain the awful pomp of death
Attends the sable-shrouded bier.

Since Strephon's virtue's sunk to rest,
Nor pity's sigh, nor sorrow's strain,
Nor magic tongue, have e'er confest
Our wounded bosom's secret pain.

The just, the good, more honours share In what the conscious breast bestows, Than vice adorn'd with sculptor's care, In all the venal pomp of woes.

A sad-eyed mourner at his tomb,
Thou, Friendship! pay thy rites divine,
And echo through the midnight gloom
That Strephon's early fall was thine.

THE AUTHOR'S LIFE.

My life is like the flowing stream

That glides where summer's beauties teem,
Meets all the riches of the gale

That on its watery bosom sail,
And wanders 'midst Elysian groves

Through all the haunts that fancy loves.

May I, when drooping days decline, And 'gainst those genial streams combine, The winter's sad decay forsake,

And centre in my parent lake.

SONG.

SINCE brightest beauty soon must fade,
That in life's spring so long has roll'd,
And wither in the drooping shade,
Ere it return to native mould;

Ye virgins, seize the fleeting hour,
In time catch Cytherea's joy,
Ere age your wonted smiles deflower,
And hopes of love and life annoy.

ON THE AUTHOR'S INTENTION OF GOING TO SEA.

FORTUNE and Bob, e'er since his birth,

Could never yet agree,

She fairly kick'd him from the earth

To try his fate at sea.

ON SEEING A COLLECTION OF PICTURES,

PAINTED BY MR. [ALEXANDER] RUNCIMAN.

[Runciman's Hall of Ossian' at Penicuik House is referred to in the following Verses. His 'paintings' are well known: and many of them have been engraved. There is a portrait of him in Stark's 'Biographia Scotica,' 1805. He died suddenly in 1785.]

O COULD my Muse, like thee, with magic skill,
Subdue the various passions at her will,

Like thee make each idea stand confest,
That honours or depraves the human breast;

Like thee could make the awe-struck world admire

An Ossian's fancy, and a Fingal's fire,

Boldly aspiring at exalted lays,

The Poet then should sing the Painter's praise.

ON NIGHT.

Now murky shades surround the pole;

Darkness lords without control:

To the notes of buzzing owl,

Lions roar and tigers howl,

Fright'ning from their azure shrine
Stars that wont in orbs to shine:
Now the sailor's storm-toss'd bark
Knows no blest celestial mark,
While in the briny troubled deep
Dolphins change their sport for sleep;
Ghosts and frightful spectres gaunt,
Churchyard's dreary footpaths haunt,
And brush with wither'd arms the dews
That fall upon the drooping yews.

EPIGRAM,

WRITTEN EXTEMPORE, AT THE DESIRE OF A GENTLEMAN WHO

WAS RATHER ILL-FAVOURED, BUT WHO HAD A FAMILY OF

BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN.

SCOTT and his children emblems are

Of real good and evil;

His children are like cherubims,

But Scott is like the devil.