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,
By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain;
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array,
Far, far I had roam❜d on a desolate track :
'Twas Autumn,—and sunshine arose on the way

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,
And my wife sobb'd aloud in her fulness of heart.

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,
Where the home of my forefathers stood.
All ruin'd and wild is their roofless abode,
And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree:
And travell'd by few is the grass-cover'd road,
Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode
To his hills that encircle the sea.

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,
All wild in the silence of nature, it drew,
From each wandering sun-beam, a lonely embrace
For the night-weed and thorn overshadow'd the

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
A thousand wild waves on the shore !

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.