XCII.

THE THRUSH'S SONG.

SWEET MAVIS! at this cool delicious hour
Of gloaming, when a pensive quietness
Hushes the odorous air,-with what a power
Of impulse unsubdued dost thou express
Thyself a spirit! While the silver dew

Holy as manna on the meadow falls,

Thy song's impassioned clarity, trembling through This omnipresent stillness, disenthrals

The soul to adoration. First I heard

A low thick lubric gurgle, soft as love,

Yet sad as memory, through the silence poured Like starlight. But the mood intenser grows, Precipitate rapture quickens, move on move Lucidly linked together, till the close.

DAVID GRAY.

XCIII.

TO A FRIEND.

Now, while the long delaying ash assumes
The delicate April green, and, loud and clear,
Through the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms,
The thrush's song enchants the captive ear;
Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling,

Stirring the still perfume that wakes around ;
Now that doves mourn, and from the distance calling,
The cuckoo answers with a sovereign sound,-

Come with thy native heart, O true and tried!
But leave all books; for what with converse high,
Flavoured with Attic wit, the time shall glide
On smoothly, as a river floweth by,

Or, as on stately pinion, through the grey
Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way.

XCIV.

WRITTEN IN EDINBURGH.

EVEN thus, methinks, a city reared should be,
Yea, an imperial city, that might hold
Five times an hundred noble towns in fee,
And either with their might of Babel old,
Or the rich Roman pomp of empery
Might stand compare, highest in arts enrolled,
Highest in arms; brave tenement for the free,
Who never crouch to thrones, or sin for gold.
Thus should her towers be raised-with vicinage
Of clear bold hills, that curve her very streets,

As if to vindicate 'mid choicest seats

Of art, abiding Nature's majesty ;

And the broad sea beyond, in calm or rage.
Chainless alike, and teaching Liberty.

EUGENE LEE.HAMILTON.

XCV.

SEA SHELL MURMURS.

THE hollow sea-shell which for years hath stood
On dusty shelves, when held against the ear
Proclaims its stormy parent; and we hear
The faint far murmur of the breaking flood.
We hear the sea. The sea? It is the blood
In our own veins, impetuous and near,

And pulses keeping pace with hope and fear And with our feelings' ever shifting mood.

Lo! in my heart I hear, as in a shell,

The murmur of a world beyond the grave,
Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be.

Thou fool! this echo is a cheat as well,-
The hum of earthly instincts; and we crave
A world unreal as the shell-heard sea.

XCVI.

JUDITH.

THERE was a gleam of jewels in the tent

Which one dim cresset lit—a baleful gleam—

And from his scattered armour seemed to stream

A dusky evil light that came and went.

But from her eyes, as over him she bent,

Watching the surface of his drunken dream,
There shot a deadlier ray, a darker beam,

A look in which her life's one lust found vent.
There was a hissing through her tightened teeth,

As with her scimitar she crouched above

His dark, doomed head, and held her perilous breath, While ever and anon she saw him move

His red lascivious lips, and smile beneath

His curled and scented beard, and mutter love.