The angler, spoil bringing,
Now homeward proud paces;
'Tis time I ceased singing
Of Findhorn's wild graces.

October, 1838.

DEFINITION OF A POET.

A PLAYER strange on life's rough stage,
Now saint, now sinner, and now sage;
A dreamer oft of creed unsound,
And yet a prophet frequent found;
A wayward wight of passions wild,
Yet tender-hearted as a child;
A spirit like the lark endowed
To sing its sweetest in a cloud;
A soul to whom, by beauty given,
A frown is hell, a smile is heaven!
The friend of Truth, past contradiction,
And yet the very slave of Fiction;
The mortal foe of vanity,

Yet no one half so vain as he;

The moralist high-toned, withal

Oft bound in Pleasure's circean thrall

The vices he can ban so well

Himself the weakest to repel!

A vapour in the whirwind's pow'r,
A dewdrop glittering for an hour,
A flow'r whose pow'r to charm is due
More to its fragrance than its hue,—
Such aye has been from days of old

The traits and types that truest shew out That strange compound of mud and gold, That Rara Avis called a poet.

MAGGIE OF LOCHGAIR.

OF all the dear charmers that be
Now blooming in Scotia fair,
The fairest and dearest to me

Is Maggie, the pride of Lochgair.

Her form is the sum of all grace,

Her heart is as warm as 'tis pure;
One look at her sweet, smiling face
Is to love her, and love evermore.

Methinks I now see that loved one-
Her tresses of gold in full flow
O'er shoulders as fair to look on

As sunshine on Sligachan's snow!

When she moves 'mong the girls on the green, Dancing there to some heart-stirring lay,

I could fancy her Fairyland's queen,

Such grace all her motions display.

When she sings, vainly would I declare
The thrilling delight that is ours?
For ne'er was heard lilting so rare
Outside of celestial bowers!

O would that less rich were her kin,
Or I laird of Glassary known!

I then might despair not to win

And wear this bright pearl as my own.

Courage, heart! Maggie's kind as she's fair,
And the Cannuck land fertile and wide;
Who knows but this lass of Lochgair

May yet bloom 'mong its bowers as my bride ?

ON A LADY PLAYING THE HARP.

SHE knelt beside the harp-her hand
Swept o'er its quivering wires,

And soon, as if some fairy band,
Unseen, beside her took their stand,
Assisting with their lyres,-

Such tones melodious filled the air
As made it almost heaven to hear.

Anon, as if in envy of

The harp's rich harmony,

She sings-it is a song of love,—
And while her fingers gently move
The wires, I think of thee,
Malvina, when in Selma's hall
Thy song was of thy Oscar's fall.

What mortal man with ears to list
Those sounds divinely sweet,
But would forever listen, blest,
And feel as if he would have kissed
The ground beneath her feet?
Such was the witching spell profound
In which she all her audience bound.

Dear woman! what mean bard unblest Would not thy praises make

His chosen theme o'er all the rest?

A world with thy fair presence graced, A world where Anna's fingers chaste Such raptures can awake,

With all its heavy sum of ill

There's much of Eden in it still!

STAFFA.

OFF with the morn's first faint ray our trim bark west

away,

Like a ghost from the Dawn, was flying

Before a fair wind which, from Ulva behind,
O'er the solemn sea went sighing.

And on, on speed we now where, far-off, on our bow
Loomed that Isle of which fame spoke so loudly,—

On, where wash the wild waves Staffa's columns and caves,

Fast and faster, our way we go proudly.

On the Paps we scarce thought-of Eigg's Cliff took slight

note;

Nor, although its blessed shore was so nigh us,

Could Columba's own Isle for a moment beguile

Our charmed gaze from that now which lay by us. Like a fragment chance-hurled from some fairer-framed world,

Mid the waves round it joyously dancing

Stood that Isle which all there well indeed might declare All unmatched save in Sinbad's romancing.

And now thy weird beach, wond'rous Staffa, we reach— Now we kneel with devotion beseeming;

Now that grotto we mark, where, 'tween daylight and dark,

Combs the mermaid her tresses gold-gleaming;