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Where seem'd the cliffs to meet on high,
His boughs athwart the narrow'd sky.
Highest of all, where white peaks glanced,
Where glistening streamers waved and danced,
The wanderer's eye could barely view
The summer heaven's delicious blue,
So wondrous wild, the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream.

Onward amid the copse 'gan peep
A narrow inlet, still and deep,
Affording scarce such breadth of brim,
As served the wild-duck's brood to swim.
Lost for a space, through thickets veering,
But broader when again appearing,

Tall rocks, and dark blue knolls their face
Could on the dark blue mirror trace;
And farther as the hunter stray'd,
Still broader sweep its channels made.
The shaggy mounds no longer stood,
Emerging from entangled wood,
But, wave-encircled, seem'd to float,
Like castle girded with its moat;
Yet broader floods extending still,
Divide them from their parent hill,
Till each, retiring, claims to be
An islet in an inland sea.

And now, to issue from the glen,
No pathway meets the wanderer's ken,
Unless he climb, with footing nice,
A far-projecting precipice.

The broom's tough roots his ladder made,
The hazel-saplings lent their aid;

And thus an airy point he won,
Where, gleaming with the setting sun,
One burnish'd sheet of living gold,
Loch Katrine lay beneath him roll'd,
In all her length far-winding lay
With promontory, creek, and bay,
And islands that, empurpled bright,
Floated amid the livelier light,
And mountains, that like giants stand,
To sentinel enchanted land.

High on the south huge Ben-venue
Down on the lake in masses threw

Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurl'd,
The fragments of an earlier world;
A wildering forest feather'd o'er
His ruin'd sides and summit hoar,

While on the north, through middle air,
Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.

*

*

*

And much I miss those sportive boys,
Companions of my mountain-joys,
Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth,
When thought is speech, and speech is truth.
Close to my side with what delight
They press'd to hear of Wallace wight,
When, pointing to his airy mound,
I call'd his ramparts holy ground!
Kindled their brows to hear me speak;
And I have smiled to feel my cheek,
Despite the difference of our years,
Return again the glow of theirs.
Ah, happy boys! such feelings pure,
They will not, cannot long endure;

K

Condemn'd to stem the world's rude tide,
You may not linger by the side;

For Fate shall thrust you from the shore,
And Passion ply the sail and oar.
Yet cherish the remembrance still
Of the lone mountain and the rill.
When musing on companions gone
We doubly feel ourselves alone,
Something, my friend, we yet may gain,—
There is a pleasure in this pain :
It soothes the love of lonely rest,
Deep in each gentler heart impress'd.
"Tis silent amid worldly toils,
And stifled soon by mental broils ;
But, in a bosom thus prepared,
Its still small voice is often heard,
Whispering a mingled sentiment,
'Twixt resignation and content.
Oft in my mind such thoughts awake
By lone St. Mary's silent lake :

Thou know'st it well,--nor fen nor sedge
Pollute the pure lake's crystal edge;
Abrupt and sheer the mountains sink
At once upon the level brink;
And just a trace of silver sand

Marks where the water meets the land.
Far in the mirror, bright and blue,
Each hill's huge outline you may view;
Shaggy with heath, but lonely bare,
Nor tree, nor bush, nor brake is there,
Save where of land yon slender line
Bears thwart the lake yon slender pine.
Yet even this nakedness has power,
And aids the feeling of the hour:

Nor thicket, dell, nor copse you spy,

Where living thing conceal'd might lie ;
Nor point, retiring, hides a dell,

Where swain, or woodman, lone might dwell; There's nothing left to Fancy's guess,

You see that all is loneliness;

And silence aids: though the steep hills
Send to the lake a thousand rills,
In summer-tide so soft they weep,
The sound but lulls the ear asleep;
Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,
So stilly is the solitude.

HYMN OF A JEWESS.

WHEN Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out of the land of bondage came,
Her fathers' God before her moved,
An awful guide in smoke and flame.
By day, along the' astonished lands
The cloudy pillar glided slow;
By night, Arabia's crimson sands
Return'd the fiery column's glow.

Then rose the choral hymn of praise,

And trump and timbrel answer'd keen, And Zion's daughters pour'd their lays, With priest's and warrior's voice between. No portents now our foes amaze,

Forsaken Israel wanders lone;

Our fathers would not know Thy ways,
And Thou hast left them to their own.

But, present still, though now unseen;
When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of Thee a cloudy screen
To temper the deceitful ray.
And O, when stoops on Judah's path,
In shade and storm, the frequent night,
Be Thou long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining light.

Our harps we left by Babel's streams,
The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,

And mute are timbrel, trump, and horn.
But Thou hast said, The blood of goat,
The flesh of ram, I will not prize ;
A contrite heart, an humble thought,
Are Mine accepted sacrifice.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.
Born, 1771; Died, 1854.

THE

STRANGER AND HIS FRIEND.

A POOR wayfaring man of grief

Hath often cross'd me on my way;

Who sued so humbly for relief,

That I could never answer " Nay:"
I had not power to ask his name,
Whither he went, or whence he came ;

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