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In awful expectation plac'd,

Await thy doom, nor impious haste

To pluck from God's right hand his instruments of death."

SAY, LOVELY DREAM.

WALLER.

SAY, lovely Dream! where could'st thou find Shades to counterfeit that face?

Colours of this glorious kind

Come not from any mortal place.

In heav'n itself thou sure wert drest
With that angel-like disguise:
Thus deluded am I blest,

And see my joy with closed eyes.

But, ah! this image is too kind
To be other than a dream:
Cruel Sacharissa's mind

Ne'er put on that sweet extreme!

Fair dream! if thou intend'st me grace,
Change that heav'nly form of thine;

Paint despis'd love in thy face,

And make it to appear like mine.

Pale, wan, and meagre let it look,
With a pity-moving shape,
Such as wander by the brook

Of Lethe, or from graves escape.

Then to that matchless nymph appear,
In whose shape thou shinest so;

Softly in her sleeping ear,

With humble words, express my woe.

Perhaps from greatness, state, and pride,
Thus surprised she may fall:
Sleep does disproportion hide,

And, death resembling, equals all.

ELEGY TO THE MEMORY OF AN
UNFORTUNATE LADY.*

POPE.

'WHAT beck'ning ghost along the moonlight shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
'Tis she!-But why that bleeding bosom gor'd?
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
Oh, ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,
Is it in heav'n a crime to love too well,
To bear too tender or too firm a heart,
To act a lover's or a Roman's part?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky,
For those who greatly think, or bravely die?
Why bade ye else, ye Powers! her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire?
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes,
The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods.
Thence to their images on earth it flows,
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.

This lady's name was Withinbury. It is said she was in love with Pope, and would have married him; but her guardian, looking upon such a match as beneath her, sent her to a convent, where she put a period to her existence.

Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull sullen pris'ners in the body's cage;
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years,
Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres;
Like eastern kings, a lazy state they keep,
And close confin'd to their own palace sleep.
From these perhaps (ere Nature bade her die)
Fate snatch'd her early to the pitying sky.
As into air the purer spirits flow,

And sep'rate from their kindred dregs below;
So flew the soul to its congenial place,
Nor left one virtue to redeem her race.

But thou, false guardian of a charge too good,
Thou mean deserter of thy brother's blood!
See on these ruby lips the trembling breath,
These cheeks now fading at the blast of death:
Cold is that breast which warm'd the world before,
And those love-darting eyes must roll no more.
Thus, if Eternal Justice rules the ball,

Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall : On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates; There passengers shall stand, and pointing say, While the long fun'rals blacken all the way, "Lo! these were they whose souls the Furies steel'd,

And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield.
Thus unlamented pass the proud away,

The gaze of fools, and pageants of a day!
So perish all whose breasts ne'er learn'd to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' woe."
What can atone, (O ever-injur'd shade!)
Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid?
No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear,
Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful
bier :

By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd.
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe

To midnight dances and the public show;
What though no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face;

What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb;
Yet shall thy grave with rising flow'rs be dress'd,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground, now sacred by thy relics made.

So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name,
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame.
How lov'd, how honour'd once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot;
A heap of dust alone remains of thee;
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!

Poets themselves must fall, like those they sung,
Deaf the prais'd ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.
Even he whose soul now melts in mournful lays,
Shall shortly want the gen'rous tear he pays;
Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part,
And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart;
Life's idle bus'ness at one gasp be o'er,
The Muse forgot, and thou belov'd no more!

THE HIGHLANDER.

Written on a Highland Soldier, who was found dead in Galloway.

REV. W. GILLESPIE.

FROM the climes of the sun, all war-worn and weary,
The Highlander sped to his youthful abode ;
Fair visions of home cheer'd the desert so dreary,
Though fierce was the noon-beam, and steep was
the road.

Till, spent with the march that still lengthen'd before him,

He stopp'd by the way in a sylvan retreat :

The light shady boughs of the birch-tree wav'd o'er him,

And the stream of the mountain fell soft at his feet.

He sunk to repose where the red heaths are blended, One dream of his childhood his fancy past o'er; But his battles are fought, and his march now is ended,

The sound of the bagpipe shall wake him no more.

No arm in the day of the conflict could wound him, Though war launch'd her thunder in fury to kill; Now the angel of death in the desert has found him, And stretch'd him in peace by the stream of the hill.

Pale Autumn spreads o'er him the leaves of the forest, The fays of the wild chant the dirge of his rest; And thou, little brook, still the sleeper deplorest, And moist'nest the heath-bell that weeps on his breast.

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