The time shall come, when I, perhaps, may tread
Your lowly glens, o'erhung with spreading broom;
Or o'er your stretching heaths, by fancy led;

Or o'er your mountains creep, in awful gloom!
Then will I dress once more the faded bower,

Where Jonson sat in Drummond's classic shade; Or crop, from Tiviotdale, each lyric flower,

And mourn on Yarrow's banks, where Willie's laid! Meantime, ye powers that on the plains which bore

The cordial youth, on Lothian's plains, attend! Where'er Home dwells, on hill, or lowly moor,

To him I lose, your kind protection lend,

And, touched with love like mine, preserve my absent friend!

Line 2d, Vallies.

Line 6th, Ben Jonson paid a visit on foot, in 1619, to the Scots poet Drummond, at his seat of Hawthornden, within four miles of Edinburgh.

Line 10th, Barrow, it seems, was at the Edinburgh university, which is in the county of Lothian.⚫

XXXI.

ADDITIONAL STANZAS.

W. ERSKINE.

THY muse may tell, how, when at evening's close,
To meet her love beneath the twilight shade,
O'er many a broom-clad brae and heathy glade,
mood the village maiden goes;

In

merry

There, on a streamlet's margin as she lies,

Chaunting some carol till her swain appears, With visage deadly pale, in pensive guise,

Beneath a wither'd fir his form he rears!

Line 8th, The wraith, or spectral appearance of a person shortly to die.

Shrieking and sad, she bends her irie flight,

When, mid dire heaths, where flits the taper blue, The whilst the moon sheds dim a sickly light,

The airy funeral meets her blasted view!

When, trembling, weak, she gains her cottage low,
Where magpies scatter notes of presage wide,
Some one shall tell, while tears in torrents flow,
That, just when twilight dimm'd the green hill's side,
Far in his lonely shiel her hapless shepherd died.

Let these sad strains to lighter sounds give place!
Bid thy brisk viol warble measures gay!

For see! recall'd by thy resistless lay,

Once more the Brownie shews his honest face.

Hail, from thy wanderings long, my much lov'd sprite!
Thou friend, thou lover of the lowly, hail!

Tell, in what realms thou sport'st thy merry night,
Trail'st the long mop, or whirl'st the mimic flail.
Where dost thou deck the much-disordered hall,
While the tired damsel in Elysium sleeps,

With early voice to drowsy workman call,

Or lull the dame, while Mirth his vigils keeps ? 'Twas thus in Caledonia's domes, 'tis said,

Thou ply'dst the kindly task in years of yore: At last, in luckless hour, some erring maid

Spread in thy nightly cell of viands store:

Ne'er was thy form beheld among their mountains more.

Then wake (for well thou can'st) that wond'rous lay,

How, while around the thoughtless matrons sleep,

Soft o'er the floor the treacherous fairies creep,
And bear the smiling infant far away :

How starts the nurse, when, for her lovely child,
She sees at dawn a gaping idiot stare!

O snatch the innocent from demons vilde,

And save the parents fond from fell despair!

In a deep cave the trusty menials wait,

When from their hilly dens, at midnight's hour,

Forth rush the airy elves in mimic state,

And o'er the moon-light heath with swiftness scour:

In glittering arms the little horsemen shine;

Last, on a milk-white steed, with targe of gold, A fay of might appears, whose arms entwine

The lost, lamented child! the shepherds bold

The unconscious infant tear from his unhallowed hold.