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Where shields of mighty heroes hung,
While Fingal heard what Ossian sung.
The heroic Age expired-it slept
Deep in its tomb :-the bramble crept
O'er Fingal's hearth; the grassy sod
Grew on the floors his sons had trod:
Malvina where art thou? Their state
The noblest-born must abdicate;

The fairest, while with fire and sword
Come Spoilers-horde impelling horde,
Must walk the sorrowing mountains, drest
By ruder hands in homelier vest.
Yet still the female bosom lent,

And loved to borrow, ornament;
Still was its inner world a place

Reached by the dews of heavenly grace;
Still pity to this last retreat
Clove fondly; to his favourite seat
Love wound his way by soft approach,
Beneath a massier Highland Broach.
When alternations came of rage
Yet fiercer, in a darker age;

And feuds, where, clan encountering clan,
The weaker perished to a man;

For maid and mother, when despair

Might else have triumphed, baffling prayer,

One small possession lacked not power,
Provided in a calmer hour,

To meet such need as might befal—
Roof, raiment, bread, or burial:
For woman, even of tears bereft,
The hidden silver Broach was left.

As generations come and go
Their arts, their customs, ebb and flow;
Fate, fortune, sweep strong powers away,
And feeble, of themselves, decay;
What poor abodes the heir-loom hide,
In which the castle once took pride!
Tokens, once kept as boasted wealth,
If saved at all, are saved by stealth.
Lo! ships, from seas by nature barred,
Mount along ways by man prepared ;
And in far-stretching vales, whose streams
Seek other seas, their canvass gleams.
Lo! busy towns spring up, on coasts
Thronged yesterday by airy ghosts;
Soon, like a lingering star forlorn
Among the novelties of morn,
While young delights on old encroach,
Will vanish the last Highland Broach.

But when, from out their viewless bed,
Like vapours, years have rolled and spread;
And this poor verse, and worthier lays,
Shall yield no light of love or praise;
Then, by the spade, or cleaving plough,
Or torrent from the mountain's brow,
Or whirlwind, reckless what his might
Entombs, or forces into light;
Blind Chance, a volunteer ally,
That oft befriends Antiquity,

And clears Oblivion from reproach,

May render back the Highland Broach*.

* How much the Broach is sometimes prized by persons in humble stations may be gathered from an occurrence mentioned to me by a female friend. She had had an opportunity of benefiting a poor old woman in her

XVI.

THE BROWNIE.

Upon a small island not far from the head of Loch Lomond, are some remains of an ancient building, which was for several years the abode of a solitary Individual, one of the last survivors of the clan of Macfarlane, once powerful in that neighbourhood. Passing along the shore opposite this island in the year 1814, the Author learned these particulars, and that this person then living there had acquired the appellation of "The Brownie.' See "The Brownie's Cell," p. 44, Vol. iii.; to which the following is a sequel.

'How disappeared he?' Ask the newt and toad;
Ask of his fellow men, and they will tell
How he was found, cold as an icicle,

Under an arch of that forlorn abode;

Where he, unpropped, and by the gathering flood
Of years hemmed round, had dwelt, prepared to try
Privation's worst extremities, and die

With no one near save the omnipresent God.
Verily so to live was an awful choice-

A choice that wears the aspect of a doom;

But in the mould of mercy all is cast

For Souls familiar with the eternal Voice;

And this forgotten Taper to the last

Drove from itself, we trust, all frightful gloom.

own hut, who, wishing to make a return, said to her daughter, in Erve, in a tone of plaintive earnestness, "I would give anything I have, but I hope she does not wish for my Broach!" and, uttering these words, she put her hand upon the Broach which fastened her kerchief, and which, she imagined, had attracted the eye of her benefactress.

XVII.

TO THE PLANET VENUS, AN EVENING STAR.

COMPOSED AT LOCH LOMOND.

THOUGH joy attend Thee orient at the birth
Of dawn, it cheers the lofty spirit most

To watch thy course when Day-light, fled from earth,
In the grey sky hath left his lingering Ghost,
Perplexed as if between a splendour lost
And splendour slowly mustering. Since the Sun,
The absolute, the world-absorbing One,
Relinquished half his empire to the host
Emboldened by thy guidance, holy Star,
Holy as princely-who that looks on thee,
Touching, as now, in thy humility

The mountain borders of this seat of care,
Can question that thy countenance is bright,
Celestial Power, as much with love as light?

XVIII.

BOTHWELL CASTLE.

(PASSED UNSEEN, ON ACCOUNT OF STORMY WEATHER.)

[IN my Sister's Journal is an account of Bothwell Castle as it appeared to us at that time.]

IMMURED in Bothwell's towers, at times the Brave (So beautiful is Clyde) forgot to mourn

VOL. IV.

I

The liberty they lost at Bannockburn.

Once on those steeps I roamed at large, and have
In mind the landscape, as if still in sight;
The river glides, the woods before me wave;
Then why repine that now in vain I crave
Needless renewal of an old delight?
Better to thank a dear and long-past day
For joy its sunny hours were free to give

Than blame the present, that our wish hath crost.
Memory, like sleep, hath powers which dreams obey,
Dreams, vivid dreams, that are not fugitive:
How little that she cherishes is lost!

XIX.

PICTURE OF DANIEL IN THE LIONS' DEN, AT HAMILTON PALACE.

AMID a fertile region green with wood

And fresh with rivers, well did it become
The ducal Owner, in his palace-home

To naturalise this tawny Lion brood;

Children of Art, that claim strange brotherhood

(Couched in their den) with those that roam at large

Over the burning wilderness, and charge

The wind with terror while they roar for food.
Satiate are these; and stilled to eye and ear;
Hence, while we gaze, a more enduring fear!
Yet is the Prophet calm, nor would the cave
Daunt him—if his Companions, now be-drowsed
Outstretched and listless, were by hunger roused:
Man placed him here, and God, he knows, can save.

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