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My friendship's utmost zeal to try,
He ask'd if I for him would die ;

The flesh was weak, my blood ran chill,
But the free spirit cried, "I will."

Then in a moment to my view,
The stranger darted from disguise ;
The tokens in his hands I knew,
My Saviour stood before mine eyes:
He spake; and my poor name he named;
"Of me thou hast not been ashamed:
These deeds shall thy memorial be;
Fear not, thou didst them unto Me."

OCCASIONAL ODE,

For the Anniversary of the Royal British System of Education.
JAMES MONTGOMERY.

THE lion o'er his wild domains
Rules with the terror of his eye;
The eagle of the rock maintains
By force his empire in the sky;
The shark, the tyrant of the flood,

Reigns through the deep with quenchless rage;

Parent and young, unwean'd from blood,

Are still the same from age to age.

Of all that live, and move, and breathe,
Man only rises o'er his birth;

He looks above, around, beneath,
At once the heir of heaven and earth:
Force, cunning, speed, which nature gave
The various tribes throughout her plan,
Life to enjoy, from death to save,-
These are the lowest powers of man.

From strength to strength he travels on:
He leaves the lingering brute behind;
And when a few short years are gone,
He soars a disembodied mind:

Beyond the

grave

his course sublime

Destined through nobler paths to run,
In his career the end of time
Is but eternity begun.

What guides him in his high pursuit,
Opens, illumines, cheers his way,
Discerns the immortal from the brute,
God's image from the mould of clay?
'Tis Knowledge:-Knowledge to the soul
Is power, and liberty, and peace;
And while celestial ages roll,

The joys of Knowledge shall increase.
Hail to the glorious plan that spread
The light with universal beams,
And through the human desert led
Truth's living, pure, perpetual streams.
-Behold a new creation rise,

New spirit breathed into the clod,
Where'er the voice of Wisdom cries,
Man, know thyself, and fear thy God."

66

THE DAISY IN INDIA.

[Supposed to be addressed by the Reverend Dr. Carey,* the learned and illustrious Baptist Missionary at Serampore, to the first plant of this kind, which sprang up unexpectedly in his garden, out of some English earth, in which other seeds had been conveyed to him from this country. With great care and nursing, the Doctor has been enabled to perpetuate the Daisy in India, as an annual only, raised by seed preserved from season to season.]

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

THRICE welcome, little English flower!
My mother-country's white and red,
In rose or lily, till this hour,

Never to me such beauty spread :

*This great and good man-this ornament to any church-this faithful preparer of others for Eternity, has recently been summoned to receive his "exceeding great reward!" He died at Serampore-the scene of his invaluable, and most interesting labours—on the 9th of June of the passing year (1834)..

Transplanted from thine island-bed,
A treasure in a grain of earth,
Strange as a spirit from the dead,
Thine embryo sprang to birth.
Thrice welcome, little English flower!
Whose tribes, beneath our natal skies,
Shut close their leaves while vapours
But, when the sun's gay beams arise,
With unabash'd but modest eyes,
Follow his motion to the west,
Nor cease to gaze till day-light dies,
Then fold themselves to rest.

Thrice welcome, little English flower,
To this resplendent hemisphere,
Where Flora's giant offspring tower
In gorgeous liveries all the

year;
Thou, only thou, art little here,
Like worth unfriended and unknown,
Yet to my British heart more dear
Than all the torrid zone.

lower;

Thrice welcome, little English flower!
Of early scenes beloved by me,
While happy in my father's bower,
Thou shalt the blithe memorial be:

The fairy sports of infancy,

Youth's golden age, and manhood's prime, Home, country, kindred, friends,-with thee, I find in this far clime.

1

Thrice welcome, little English flower!
I'll rear thee with a trembling hand;
Oh, for the April sun and shower,
The sweet May dews of that fair land,
Where Daisies, thick as star-light stand
In every walk!—that here
may shoot
Thy scions, and thy buds expand,
A hundred from one root.

Thrice welcome, little English flower!
To me the pledge of hope unseen;
When sorrow would my soul o'erpower
For joys that were, or might have been,

I'll call to mind how, fresh, and green,
I saw thee waking from the dust;
Then turn to heaven with brow serene,
And place in God my trust.

ROBERT BURNS.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

WHAT bird in beauty, flight, or song,
Can with the Bard compare,

Who sang as sweet, and soared as strong,
As ever child of air?

His plume, his note, his form, could Burns,
For whim or pleasure, change;

He was not one, but all by turns,
With transmigration strange.

The blackbird, oracle of spring,
When flowed his moral lay;

The swallow, wheeling on the wing,
Capriciously at play :

The humming-bird, from bloom to bloom,

Inhaling heavenly balm ;

The raven, in the tempest's gloom;

The halcyon, in the calm:

In "Auld Kirk Alloway," the owl,

At witching time of night;

By" Bonnie Doon," the earliest fowl
That caroll'd to the light.

He was the wren amidst the grove,
When in his homely vein ;

At Bannockburn the bird of Jove,

With thunder in his train;

The woodlark, in his mournful hours;
The goldfinch, in his mirth;

The thrush, a spendthrift of his powers,
Enrapturing heaven and earth :

The swan, in majesty and grace,
Contemplative and still;

But roused, no falcon, in the chase,
Could like his satire kill.

The linnet in simplicity,

In tenderness the dove:

But more than all beside was he,
The nightingale in love.

Oh! had he never stooped to shame,
Nor lent a charm to vice,

How had Devotion loved to name,
That bird of Paradise.

Peace to the dead!-In Scotia's choir
Of minstrels great and small,

He sprang from his spontaneous fire,
The phoenix of them all.

GEOLOGY-KIRKDALE CAVE-PROFESSOR

BUCKLAND.

"Scotsman," of 19th July, 1823.

THERE is probably no science at the present day that holds out more tempting problems, or has more curious secrets in store, than geology. Some years ago, it was the object of a very unreasonable jealousy among theologians; and yet it has happened in this as in other cases, that what was thought to threaten serious consequences to religion, promises ultimately to furnish new arguments for its truth. In the case before us, it has, we may say, already placed beyond the reach of controversy a great physical fact, resting almost solely on the testimony of the Scriptures, which was sometimes perhaps felt as a stumbling block by divines, and was long made a subject of derision by the infidel wits of the last century-we mean the general Deluge. Professor Buckland's book is extremely curious; and though calculated chiefly for men of science, will be found perfectly intelligible and very interesting by ordinary readers. He had Cuvier's researches to furnish him with lights and supply him with materials; but by fixing his attention on a single class of phenomena, he has been able to carry his investigations a step

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