Is dear and exquisite !—but oh! no more—
Lady! adieu-my heart has linger'd o'er

These vanish'd times, till all that round me lies,

Stream, banks and bowers have faded on my eyes!

IMPROMPTU,

AFTER A VISIT TO MRS.

OF MONTREAL.

'Twas but for a moment—and yet in that time

WAS

She crowded th' impressions of many an hour; Her eye had a glow, like the sun of her clime,

Which wak'd every feeling at once into flower!

Oh! could we have stol'n but one rapturous day,
To renew such impressions again and again,
The things we should look and imagine and say

Would be worth all the life we had wasted till then!

What we had not the leisure or language to speak,

We should find some more exquisite mode of revealing, And, between us, should feel just as much in a week, As others would take a millennium in feeling!

WRITTEN ON PASSING

DEAD-MAN'S ISLAND',

IN THE

GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE, LATE IN THE EVENING, SEPTEMBER, 1804.

SEE

E you, beneath yon cloud so dark,

Fast gliding along, a gloomy Bark?

Her sails are full, though the wind is still,

And there blows not a breath her sails to fill!

This is one of the Magdalen Islands, and, singularly enough, is the property of Sir Isaac Coffin. The above lines were suggested by a superstition very common among sailors, who call this ghost-ship, I think, "the flying Dutch-man."

We were thirteen days on our passage from Quebec to Halifax, and I had been so spoiled by the very splendid hospitality, with which my friends of the Phaeton and Boston had treated me, that I was but ill prepared to encounter the miseries of a Canadian ship. The weather however was pleasant, and the scenery along the river delightful. Our passage through the Gut of Canso, with a bright sky and a fair wind, was particularly striking and romantic.

SS

Oh! what doth that vessel of darkness bear?
The silent calm of the grave is there,

Save now and again a death-knell rung,
And the flap of the sails, with night-fog hung!

There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador;

Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,
Full many a mariner's bones are tost!

Yon shadowy Bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim blue fire, that lights her deck,
Doth play on as pale and livid a crew,
As ever yet drank the church-yard dew!

To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast,
To Deadman's Isle she speeds her fast;
By skeleton shapes her sails are furl'd,

And the hand that steers is not of this world!

Oh! hurry thee on-oh! hurry thee on
Thou terrible Bark! ere the night be gone,
Nor let morning look on so foul a sight
As would blanch for ever her rosy light!

ΤΟ

THE BOSTON FRIGATE',

ON

REAVING HALIFAX FOR ENGLAND,

OCTOBER, 1804.

ΝΟΣΤΟΥ ΠΡΟΦΑΣΙΣ ΓΛΥΚΕΡΟΥ.

Pindar. Pyth. 4.

WITH triumph this morning, oh Boston! I hail
The stir of thy deck and the spread of thy sail,
For they tell me I soon shall be wafted, in thee,
To the flourishing isle of the brave and the free,
And that chill Nova-Scotia's unpromising strand
Is the last I shall tread of American land.

Well-peace to the land! may the people, at length,
Know that freedom is bliss, but that honour is strength;

1 Commanded by Captain J. E. Douglas, with whom I returned to England, and to whom I am indebted for many, many kindnesses. In truth, I should but offend the delicacy of my friend Douglas, and, at the same time, do injustice to my own feelings of gratitude, did I attempt to say how much I owe to him.