FRAGMENTS,

WHICH ORIGINALLY APPEARED

IN

THE EDINBURGH ANNUAL REGISTER,

FOR 1809.

FRAGMENTS.

THE POACHER.

WELCOME, grave Stranger, to our green retreats,

Where health with exercise and freedom meets !
Thrice welcome, Sage, whose philosophic plan
By Nature's limits metes the rights of man ;
Generous as he, who now for freedom bawls,
Now gives full value for true Indian shawls;
O'er court, o'er custom-house, his shoe who flings,
Now bilks excisemen, and now bullies kings.
Like his, I ween, thy comprehensive mind
Holds laws as mouse-traps baited for mankind;
Thine eye, applausive, each sly vermin sees,
That baulks the snare, yet battens on the cheese;

Thine ear has heard, with scorn instead of awe,
Our buckskin'd justices expound the law,
Wire-draw the acts that fix for wires the pain,
And for the netted partridge noose the swain ;
And thy vindictive arm would fain have broke
The last light fetter of the feudal yoke,

To give the denizens of wood and wild,

Nature's free race, to each her free-born child.
Hence hast thou mark'd, with grief, fair London's race
Mock'd with the boon of one poor Easter chace,
And long'd to send them forth as free as when
Pour'd o'er Chantilly the Parisian train,
When musket, pistol, blunderbuss, combined,
And scarce the field-pieces were left behind!

A squadron's charge each leveret's heart dismay'd,
On every covey fired a bold brigade :

La Douce Humanité approved the sport,

For great the alarm indeed, yet small the hurt;
Shouts patriotic solemnized the day,

And Seine re-echo'd Vive la Liberté !

But mad Citoyen, meek Monsieur again,

With some few added links resumes his chain ;
Then since such scenes to France no more are known,

Come, view with me a hero of thine own!

One, whose free actions vindicate the cause
Of sylvan liberty o'er feudal laws.

Seek we yon glades, where the proud oak o'ertops
Wide-waving seas of birch and hazel copse,
Leaving between deserted isles of land,

Where stunted heath is patch'd with ruddy sand;
And lonely on the waste the yew is seen,

Or straggling hollies spread a brighter green.
Here, little worn, and winding dark and steep,
Our scarce-mark'd path descends yon dingle deep :
Follow-but heedful, cautious of a trip,-

In earthly mire philosophy may slip.

Step slow and wary o'er that swampy stream,
Till, guided by the charcoal's smothering steam,