SONG. IN SIR ANTHONY LOVE, OR THE RAMBLING LADY. PURSUING Beauty, men descry The distant shore, and long to prove Still richer in variety The treasures of the land of love. We women, like weak Indians, stand But she who trades with them is lost. With humble vows they first begin, They quickly play another part. For beads and baubles we resign, And yet the tyrants will have more. Be wise, be wise, and do not try For love is but discovery; When that is made the pleasure's done. ROBERT BLAIR. BORN 1699.-DIED 1747. ROBERT BLAIR was minister of the parish of Athelstaneford, in East Lothian. His son, who died not many years ago, was a very high legal character in Scotland. The eighteenth century has produced few specimens of blank verse of so powerful and simple a character as that of the Grave. It is a popular poem, not merely because it is religious, but because its language and imagery are free, natural, and picturesque. The latest editor of the poets has, with singularly bad taste, noted some of this author's most nervous and expressive phrases as vulgarisms, among which he reckons that of friendship" the solder of society." Blair may be a homely and even a gloomy poet in the eye of fastidious criticism; but there is a masculine and pronounced character even in his gloom and homeliness that keeps it most distinctly apart from either dulness or vulgarity. His style pleases us like the powerful expression of a countenance without regular beauty. WHILST Some affect the sun, and some the shade, Their aims as various, as the roads they take The keys of hell and death.The Grave-dread thing! Men shiver when thou'rt nam'd: Nature, appall'd, Shakes off her wonted firmness.- -Ah! how dark Thy long-extended realms, and rueful wastes! Where nought but silence reigns, and night, dark night, Dark as was chaos, ere the infant sun Was roll'd together, or had tried his beams. Athwart the gloom profound.The sickly taper, And only serves to make thy night more irksome. Embodied, thick, perform their mystic rounds. See yonder hallow'd fane ;-the pious work Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird, And tatter'd coats of arms, send back the sound The mansions of the dead.Rous'd from their slumbers, In grim array the grisly spectres rise, Pass and repass, hush'd as the foot of Night. That scarce two crows could lodge in the same tree. here: Wild shrieks have issued from the hollow tombs: Dead men have come again, and walk'd about; And the great bell has toll'd, unrung, untouch'd. (Such tales their cheer at wake or gossiping, When it draws near to witching time of night.) Oft, in the lone church-yard at night I've seen, By glimpse of moon-shine chequering through the trees, The school-boy, with his satchel in his hand, That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand * Invidious grave!-how dost thou rend in sunder I owe thee much. Thou hast deserv'd from me, |