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SONNET.

Long time a child, and still a child, when years
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I,—
For yet I lived like one not born to die;
A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears,
No hope I needed, and I knew no fears.
But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking,
I waked to sleep no more, at once o'ertaking
The vanguard of my age, with all arrears
Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man,
Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is grey,
For I have lost the race I never ran:
A rathe December blights my lagging May;
And still I am a child, though I be old,
Time is my debtor for my years untold.

TO A LOFTY BEAUTY, FROM HER POOR KINSMAN.

Fair maid, had I not heard thy baby cries,
Nor seen thy girlish, sweet vicissitude,

Thy mazy motions, striving to elude,
Yet wooing still a parent's watchful eyes,
Thy humours, many as the opal's dyes,
And lovely all ;-methinks thy scornful mood,
And bearing high of stately womanhood,-
Thy brow, where Beauty sits to tyrannize
O'er humble love, had made me sadly fear thee;
For never sure was seen a royal bride,
Whose gentleness gave grace to so much pride-
My very thoughts would tremble to be near thee.
But when I see thee at thy father's side,

Old times unqueen thee, and old loves endear thee.

MAY, 1840.

A lovely morn, so still, so very still,

It hardly seems a growing day of Spring, Though all the odorous buds are blossoming, And the small matin birds were glad and shrill Some hours ago; but now the woodland rill Murmurs along, the only vocal thing,

Save when the wee wren flits with stealthy wing,
And cons by fits and bits her evening trill.
Lovers might sit on such a morn as this

An hour together, looking at the sky,
Nor dare to break the silence with a kiss,
Long listening for the signal of a sigh;
And the sweet Nun, diffused in voiceless prayer,
Feel her own soul through all the brooding air.

TO A DEAF AND DUMB LITTLE GIRL.

Like a loose island on the wide expansc,
Unconscious floating on the fickle sea,
Herself her all, she lives in privacy ;
Her waking life as lonely as a trance,
Doomed to behold the universal dance,
And never hear the music which expounds
The solemn step, coy slide, the merry bounds,
The vague, mute language of the countenance.
In vain for her I smooth my antic rhyme;
She cannot hear it, all her little being
Concentred in her solitary seeing-

What can she know of beaut[eous] or sublime?
And yet methinks she looks so calm and good,
God must be with her in her solitude.

STANZAS.

She was a queen of noble Nature's crowning,
A smile of her's was like an act of grace;
She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning,
Like daily beauties of the vulgar race:
But if she smiled, a light was on her face,
A clear, cool kindliness, a lunar beam

Of peaceful radiance, silvering o'er the stream
Of human thought with unabiding glory;
Not quite a waking truth, not quite a dream,
A visitation, bright and transitory.

But she is changed,-hath felt the touch of sorrow,
No love hath she, no understanding friend;

Oh grief! when heaven is forced of earth to borrow
What the poor niggard earth has not to lend;
But when the stalk is snapt, the rose must bend.
The tallest flower that skyward rears its head,
Grows from the common ground, and there must shed
Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely,
That they should find so base a bridal bed,
Who lived in virgin pride, so sweet and purely.

She had a brother, and a tender father,
And she was loved, but not as others are
From whom we ask return of love,-but rather
As one might love a dream; a phantom fair
Of something exquisitely strange and rare,
Which all were glad to look on, men and maids,
Yet no one claimed-as oft, in dewy glades
The peering primrose, like a sudden gladness,
Gleams on the soul, yet unregarded fades ;-
The joy is ours, but all its own the sadness.

"Tis vain to say-her worst of grief is only
The common lot, which all the world have known;
To her 'tis more, because her heart is lonely,
And yet she hath no strength to stand alone,—
Once she had playmates, fancies of her own,

And she did love them. They are past away
As Fairies vanish at the break of day;
And like a spectre of an age departed,
Or unsphered Angel woefully astray,
She glides along -the solitary hearted.

SONG.

She is not fair to outward view

As many maidens be,

Her loveliness I never knew

Until she smiled on me ;

Oh! then I saw her eye was bright,
A well of love, a spring of light.

But now her looks are coy and cold,
To mine they ne'er reply,
And yet I cease not to behold
The love-light in her eye:
Her very frowns are fairer far,

Than smiles of other maidens are.

SUMMER RAIN.

Thick lay the dust, uncomfortably white,
In glaring mimicry of Arab sand.

The woods and mountains slept in hazy light;
The meadows look'd athirst and tawny tanned;
The little rills had left their channels bare,
With scarce a pool to witness what they were;
And the shrunk river gleamed 'mid oozy stones,
That stared like any famished giant's bones.

Sudden the hills grew black, and hot as stove
The air beneath; it was a toil to be.
There was a growling as of angry Jove,
Provoked by Juno's prying jealousy-

A flash-a crash-the firmament was split,
And down it came in drops-the smallest fit
To drown a bee in fox-glove bell conceal'd;
Joy filled the brook, and comfort cheered the field.

WILLIAM MOTHERWELL.

[WILLIAM MOTHERWELL, born in Glasgow in 1797, became a limb of the law' in 1819, being then appointed to the office of Sheriff Clerk Depute at Paisley. In 1828 he put his literary talent at the service of his party, edited a Tory newspaper, The Paisley Advertiser, and afterwards The Glasgow Courier. The strain of journalism proved too much for him, and he died of apoplexy at the early age of thirty-seven. A small volume of poems, narrative and lyrical, published in 1832, was the only fruit of his fine poetic gifts.]

Motherwell's reputation in his own country as a poet was made by the plaintive song of Jeanie Morrison, a sweet and touching reminiscence of pleasant days spent with a school playfellow and child sweetheart. This and another song in the Scotch dialect, My heid is like to break, in which a betrayed damsel harrows up the feelings of her seducer with pitiless pathos, may be said to be the only two lyrics of his that have taken any hold of fame. They prove him to have been a man of keen sensibility; he was also a man of vigorous intellect and large culture, more of a student and a scholar than any contemporary Scotch lyrist. He wrote but little in verse-after he reached the prime of manhood his powers were wasted in vehement partisan support of a hopeless cause—but the little that he did write was not in the minor key of the songs in his native dialect. The exploits of the Vikings fascinated his imagination, and as the bard of these sturdy warriors he sang with a vigour that entitles him to be named as a link between Gray and Collins and Mr. William Morris. Motherwell found in the mighty deeds and haughty spirit of the irresistible masters of the sea more congenial themes than the woes and the aspirations of the Jacobites of which the literary world by his time was becoming somewhat weary, and revelled in the fresh field with eager delight. The most touching of his poems in its personal emotion, I am not sad, shows him resigned to 'the sadness of a nameless tomb,' but it is hard to believe that the wealth and variety of power evidenced in such poems as The Madman's Love, and his two songs in the Scotch dialect could have rested unused.

W. MINTO.

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