His drink the living water from the rock: And he, though oft with dust and sweat besprent, Did guide and guard their wanderings, wheresoe'er they went. And yet poor Edwin was no vulgar boy. And now he laughed aloud, yet none knew why. The neighbours stared and sighed, yet blessed the lad; Some deemed him woudrous wise, and some believed him mad. But why should I his childish feats display? The exploit of strength, dexterity, or speed, His heart. from cruel sport estranged, would bleed By trap or net, by arrow or by sling; These he detested, those he scorned to wield; And sure the sylvan reign unbloody joy might yield. Lo! where the strippling, rapt in wonder roves, Would Edwin this majestic scene resign For aught the huntsman's puny craft supplies? Ah, no! he better knows great Nature's charms to prize. And oft he traced the uplands to survey, But lo! the sun appears, and heaven, earth, ocean smile And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb, And view the enormous waste of vapour, tost In truth he was a strange and wayward wight, A sigh, a tear, so sweet, he wished not to control. Morning Landscape. Even now his eves with smiles of rapture glow, But who the melodies of morn can tell? The cottage-curs at early pilgrim bark; Crowned with her pail the tripping milkmaid sings; The whistling ploughman stalks afield: and, hark! Down the rough slope the ponderous wagon rings; Through rustling corn the hare astonished springs; Slow tolls the village-clock the drowsy hour; The partridge bursts away on whirring wings; Deep mourns the turtle in sequestered bower, And shrill lark carols clear from her aërial tower. Life and Immortality. O ye wild groves, O where is now your bloom!- Ah! why has fickle chance this ruin wrought ?* Where now the rill, melodious, pure, and cool, And meads, with life, and mirth, and beauty crowned? Ah! see, the unsightly slime, and sluggish pool, Have all the solitary vale embrowned; Fled each fair form, and mute each melting sound, And hark! the river, bursting every mound, Down the vale thunders, and with wasteful sway Uproots the grove, and rolls the shattered rocks away. Yet such the destiny of all on earth: Borne on the swift, though silent wings of Time, And be it so. Let those deplore their doom Soon shall the orient with new lustre burn, Shall I be left forgotten in the dust, Bid him, though doomed to perish, hope to live? No: Heaven's immortal Spring shall yet arrive, And man's majestic beauty bloom again, Bright through the eternal year of Love's triumphant reign. When in the crimson cloud of even The lingering light decays, Retirement. 'Ye cliffs, in hoary grandeur piled What time the wan moon's yellow horn To you, ye wastes, whose artless charms Deep in your most sequestered bower 'Thy shades, thy silence now be mine, Whence the scared owl on pinions gray 'Oh, while to thee the woodland pours And balmy from the bank of flowers No ray from Grandeur's gilded car 'But if some pilgrim through the glade For he of joys divine shall tell, That wean from earthly woe, And triumph o'er the mighty spell That chains his heart below. For me, no more the path invites No more I climb those toilsome heights, The Hermit. At the close of the day, when the hamlet is still, Ah! why, all abandoned to darkness and woe, Mourn, sweetest complainer, man calls thee to mourn; 'Now gliding remote on the verge of the sky, "Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more; Kind nature the embryo blossom will save. But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn- "Twas thus, by the glare of false science betrayed, My thoughts wont to roam, from shade onward to shade, "O pity, great Father of Light," then I cried, From doubt and from darkness thou only canst free!" 'And darkness and doubt are now flying away, No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn. So breaks on the traveller, faint. and astray, The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn. See Truth, Love, and Mercy in triumph descending, And Nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom! On the cold check of death smiles and roses are blending, WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE. An admirable translation of the 'Lusiad' of Camoens, the most distinguished poet of Portugal, was executed by WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE, himself a poet of taste and fancy, but of no great originality or energy. Mickle was son of the minister of Langholm, in Dum friesshire, where he was born in 1734. He was engaged in trade in Edinburgh as conductor, and afterwards partner, of a brewery; but he failed in business, and in 1764 went to London, desirous of literary distinction. Lord Lyttelton noticed and encouraged his poetical efforts, and Mickle was buoyed up with dreams of patronage and celebrity. Two years of increasing destitution dispelled this vision, and the poet was glad to accept the situation of corrector of the Clarendon press at Oxford. Here he published Pollio,' an elegy, and the Concubine,' a moral poem in the manner of Spenser, which he afterwards reprinted with the title of Syr Martyn.' Mickle adopted the obsolete phraseology of Spenser, which was too antiquated even for the age of the Faery Queen,' and which Thomson had almost wholly discarded in his Castle of Indolence.' The first stanza of this poem has been quoted by Sir Walter Scott-divested of its antique spelling -in illustration of a remark made by him, that Mickle, 'with a vein of great facility, united a power of verbal melody, which might have been envied by bards of much greater renown:' Awake, ye west winds, through the lonely dale, Even now, with balmy sweetness, breathes the gale, Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake, Sir Walter adds, that Mickle, being a printer by profession, frequently put his lines into types without previously taking the trouble to put them into writing. This is mentioned by none of the poet's biographers, and is improbable. The office of a corrector of the press is quite separate from the mechanical operations of the printer. Mickle's poem was highly successful-not the less perhaps, because it was printed anonymously, and was ascribed to different authors-and it went through three editions. In 1771, he published the first canto of his great translation, which was completed in 1776; and being supported by a long list of subscribers, was highly advantageous both to his fame and fortune. In 1779, he went out to Portugal as secretary to Commodore Johnston, and was received with much distinction in Lisbon by the countrymen of Camoens. On the return of the expedition, Mickle was appointed joint-agent for the distribution of the prizes. His own share was considerable; and having received some money by his marriage with a lady whom he had known in his obscure sojourn at Oxford, the latter days of the poet were spent in ease and leisure. He died at Forest Hill, near Oxford, in 1788. The most popular of Mickle's original poems is his ballad of 'Cumnor Hall' which has attained additional celebrity by its having suggested to Sir Walter Scott the groundwork of his romance of 'Kenil |