We are not friends of yesterday ;
But poets' fancies are a little
Disposed to heat and cool, (they say,) –
By turns impressible and brittle.

Well! should its frailty e'er condemn
My heart to prize or please you less,
Your type is still the sealing gem,

And mine the waxen brittleness.

What transcripts of my weal and wo
This little signet yet may lock, -
What utterances to friend or foe,

In reason's calm or passion's shock!

What scenes of life's yet curtained page
May own its confidential die,

Whose stamp awaits th' unwritten page,
And feelings of futurity!

Yet wheresoe'er my pen I lift
To date the epistolary sheet,
The blest occasion of the gift

Shall make its recollection sweet;

Sent when the star that rules your fates Hath reached its influence most benignWhen every heart congratulates,

And none more cordially than mine.

So speed my song-marked with the crest That erst the advent'rous Norman wore, Who won the Lady of the West,

The daughter of Macaillan Mor.

Crest of my sires! whose blood it sealed With glory in the strife of swords,

Ne'er may the scroll that bears it yield
Degenerate thoughts or faithless words!

Yet little might I prize the stone,
If it but typed the feudal tree

From whence, a scattered leaf, I'm blown
In Fortune's mutability.

No! but it tells me of a heart
Allied by friendship's living tie;
A prize beyond the herald's art
Our soul-sprung consanguinity!

KATHRINE! to many an hour of mine

Light wings and sunshine you have lent;

And so adieu, and still be thine

The all-in-all of life- Content!

THE DIRGE OF WALLACE.

THEY lighted a taper at the dead of night,

And chanted their holiest hymn;

But her brow and her bosom were damp with affrightHer eye was all sleepless and dim!

And the lady of Elderslie wept for her lord,

When a death-watch beat in her lonely room, When her curtain had shook of its own accord, And the raven had flapped at her window-board – To tell of her warrior's doom.

"Now, sing ye the death-song, and loudly pray
For the soul of my knight so dear;
And call me a widow this wretched day,
Since the warning of God is here.

For a nightmare rides on my strangled sleep:-
The lord of my bosom is doomed to die;
His valorous heart they have wounded deep;
And the blood-red tears shall his country weep
For Wallace of Elderslie!"

Yet knew not his country that ominous hour,
Ere the loud matin bell was rung,

That a trumpet of death on an English tower
Had the dirge of her champion sung!
When his dungeon light looked dim and red
On the high-born blood of a martyr slain,
No anthem was sung at his holy death-bed;
No weeping there was when his bosom bled-
And his heart was rent in twain!

Oh, it was not thus when his oaken spear
Was true to that knight forlorn,

And hosts of a thousand were scattered, like deer
At the blast of the hunter's horn;

When he strode on the wreck of each well-fought field With the yellow-haired chiefs of his native land;

For his lance was not shivered on helmet or shield And the sword that seemed fit for Archangel to wield Was light in his terrible hand!

Yet bleeding and bound, though the Wallace wight
For his long-loved country die,

The bugle ne'er sung to a braver knight

Than William of Elderslie !

But the day of his glory shall never depart;

His head unentombed shall with glory be palmed: From its blood streaming altar his spirit shall start; Though the raven has fed on his mouldering heart, A nobler was never embalmed!

17*

CHAUCER AND WINDSOR.

LONG shalt thou flourish, Windsor! bodying forth
Chivalric times, and long shall live around

Thy Castle

the old oaks of British birth,

Whose knarled roots, tenacious and profound,
As with a lion's talons grasp the ground.
But should thy towers in ivied ruin rot,

There's one, thine inmate once, whose strain renowned
Would interdict thy name to be forgot;

For Chaucer loved thy bowers and trode this very spot.
Chaucer! our Helicon's first fountain-stream,
Our morning star of song- that led the way

To welcome the long-after coming beam
Of Spenser's light and Shakspeare's perfect day.
Old England's fathers live in Chaucer's lay,

As if they ne'er had died. He grouped and drew
Their likeness with a spirit of life so gay,

That still they live and breathe in Fancy's view,
Fresh beings fraught with truth's imperishable hue.

GILDEROY.

THE last, the fatal hour is come,
That bears my love from me:
I hear the dead note of the drum,
I mark the gallows' tree!

The bell has toll'd; it shakes my heart;
The trumpet speaks thy name;

And must my Gilderoy depart

To bear a death of shame ?

No bosom trembles for thy doom;
No mourner wipes a tear;
The gallows' foot is all thy tomb,
The sledge is all thy bier.

Oh, Gilderoy! bethought we then
So soon, so sad to part,
When first in Roslin's lovely glen
You triumph'd o'er my heart?

Your locks they glitter'd to the sheen, Your hunter garb was trim;

And graceful was the riband green

That bound your manly limb!

Ah! little thought I to deplore
Those limbs in fetters bound;
Or hear upon the scaffold floor,
The midnight hammer sound.

Ye cruel, cruel, that combined
The guiltless to pursue;
My Gilderoy was ever kind,
He could not injure you.

A long adieu! but where shall fly
Thy widow all forlorn,

When every mean and cruel eye
Regards my woe with scorn?

Yes they will mock thy widow's tears,
And hate thy orphan boy;
Alas! his infant beauty wears
The form of Gilderoy.