And when her bright form shall appear,
Each bird shall harmoniously join
In a concert, so soft and so clear,

As she may not be fond to resign,

I have found out a gift for my fair,

I have found where the wood-pigeons breed; But let me that plunder forbear,

She will say, 'twas a barbarous deed.
For he ne'er could be true, she averr'd,
Who could rob a poor bird of its young;
And I lov'd her the more when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue.

I have heard her with sweetness unfold
How that pity was due to a dove;
That it ever attended the bold,

And she call'd it the Sister of Love.
But her words such a pleasure convey,
So much I her accents adore,
Let her speak, and, whatever she say,
Methinks I should love her the more.

Can a bosom so gentle remain

Unmov'd, when her Corydon sighs? Will a nymph that is fond of the plain, These plains and this valley despise ? Dear regions of silence and shade!

Soft scenes of contentment and ease!
Where I could have pleasingly stray'd,
If ought in her absence could please.

But where does my Phyllida stray?
And where are her grots and her bowers?
Are the groves and the valleys as gay,
And the shepherds as gentle as ours?

The groves may perhaps be as fair,
And the face of the valleys as fine;
The swains may in manners compare,
But their love is not equal to mine.

THE CHASE.

A Ballad.

ANDREW MERCER.

WHERE Loch-Mary roars round its mountainous shores,

And lends the young Yarrow its wave;
Where Dryhope is dun with the sultry sun,
Stood the castle of Gilbert the brave:
Of Gilbert the fear of the southern race,

In the moonlight combat afar on the hill,
The boast of the Forest, and chief in the chase,
Whose stern eye of war, and whose love-soften'd
grace,

Were the pride of the fair Ann Morville.

At the fall of even, when dusky the heaven,
The lovers had met in the grove,

To breathe their soft vows beneath the green boughs,
While the cushat sat cooing above.
They whisper'd the date of the nuptial day,

And sigh'd that three mornings were yet to awake;
His sigh was deep as his rage in the fray,
And the love of the damsel was mild as the ray
That now play'd on the heaving lake.

In the following morn, at the sound of the horn,
The yell of the huntsmen arose,
And the clarion shrill shook every hill,
As if trod by a thousand foes!

gay was the revel along the green,

When the quiver'd horsemen skirmishing join'd! But never a chief of so gallant a mien, Though many assembled on that day, was seen, As Gilbert, whose bow hung behind.

Ah! many a hart from his hind shall depart,
And the dens of his love in the wood,
And the bristled boar shall welter in gore,
Far, far from his last night's abode :
But though all the beasts of the mountains fall,
Can the red tide atone for a ruddier stain ?
A hundred antlers hung in the hall,

And the trophied tusks of the boar were but small,
For the life of the Chieftain slain!

Lo, start the dun roes at the sound of their foes, And the fear of the hunter's wile,

For with bugle and hounds the region resounds, O'er many a copse-cover'd mile!

And a hundred coursers neigh'd in the wind,

On the green hills of Henderland sounding afar; The lake of St Mary the revelry join'd,

And thunder'd throughout to its mountains behind, The shout of the woodland war!

Ere felt was the power of the noon-day hour,
Ten deer fell by Gilbert's hand,

And twice six more were pierc'd at the core,
By the rest of the hunter band;

When furious and foaming, with hungry teeth,

A bellowing boar rush'd on through the dell, A tempest of arrows, swift-ridden by death, Discharg'd at the monster its ravenous wrathBut more than a monster fell!

Sigh, ye sons of the bow, for the hunter laid low,
By the chance-erring arrow misled;

And bewail the sad hour, ye dames of the bower,
And comfort the bride of the dead!
For fall'n is the fear of the southern race,

In the moonlight combat afar on the hill,
The boast of the Forest, and chief in the chase,
Whose stern eye of war, and whose love-soften'd
grace,

Were the pride of the fair Ann Morville!

And deep did ye grieve, and your bosoms heave, Ye Chieftains and Dames of the hall;

But the hapless bride, when she heard he had died, She wept not she wept not at all!

For the blasting news, like a bolt of the sky,

In a moment had dried up and wither'd her brain; Not a tear-drop remain'd to moisten her eye, And the soul-moving spark of her reason did fly, And never return'd again!

Despair gnaw'd his prey in her bosom by day, 'Mid the darkest abode of the tower,

And she went to the grove, to meet with her love,
At the blue and moonlight hour.

And thence, as the mood of her madness inclin❜d,
She flew to the spot where the hunter fell,
Embracing each bush with a pressure so kind,
As though she believ'd, in her nerve-broken mind,
That her lover was yet in the dell !

Soon her body she gave to her Gilbert's grave,
That bloom'd in the beechen grove,

Where they breath'd their soft vows, beneath the green boughs,

While the cushat sat cooing above.

And the villager yet, while he points out the place,
Relates with a sigh their story of woe,
And adds, that they woo'd 'mong a mortal race,
But were wedded above, with celestial grace,
Which the children of earth cannot know!

LOVE ODE.

DAVENPORT.

YE waving woods! ye hills! Ye springs and warbling rills! Ye far-spread wilds, and sun-excluding bowers! Where, stung with anguish deep,

I wander'd oft to weep,

And waste, unseen, the slowly-passing hours!

Once more from cities proud,
Tir'd of their moiling crowd,

I come again, my former paths to tread;
But not, as erst, shall I

Amid your beauties sigh,

To all but pain and hopeless sorrow dead.

Your melancholy reign
Ends, O long-cherish'd train

Of moody thoughts and soul-depressing cares;
For me Ianthe wreathes

A myrtle crown, and breathes

Soft, rapt'rous sighs, fond vows, and tend rest prayers.

She, she, divinest maid,

Blooms in such charms array'd

As roses wear upon their sunny beds!