DESPONDENCY.

OPPRESS'D with grief, oppress'd with care,

A burden more than I can bear,

I set me down and sigh:
O life! thou art a galling load,
Along a rough, a weary road,

To wretches such as I!
Dim backward as I cast my view,
What sick'ning scenes appear!

What sorrows YET may pierce me through,

Too justly I may fear!

Still caring, despairing,

Must be my bitter doom;

My woes here shall close ne'er,
But with the closing tomb!

Happy, ye sons of busy life,

Who equal to the bustling strife,
No other view regard;

Even when the wished end's denied,
Yet while the busy means are plied,
They bring their own reward;
Whilst I, a hope-abandon'd wight,
Unfitted with an AIM,

Meet every sad returning night,
And joyless morn the same.
You bustling, and justling,
Forget each grief and pain;

I listless, yet restless,

Find every prospect vain.

How blest the Solitary's lot,

Who, all-forgetting, all forgot,

Within his humble cell,

The cavern wild, with tangling roots,
Sits o'er his newly-gather'd fruits,
Beside his crystal well!

Or, haply, to his evening thought,
By unfrequented stream,

The

ways

of men are distant brought,

A faint collected dream:

While praising and raising

His thoughts to heaven on high, As wand'ring, meand'ring,

He views the solemn sky.

Than I, no lonely hermit plac'd,
Where never human footstep trac'd,
Less fit to play the part;

The lucky moment to improve,

And JUST to stop, and JUST to move,
With self-respecting art;

But ah! those pleasures, loves, and joys,

Which I too keenly taste,

The Solitary can despise,

Can want and yet be blest!

He needs not, he heeds not,

Or human love or hate,
Whilst I here, must cry here,
At perfidy ingrate.

Oh! enviable, early days,

When dancing thoughtless pleasure's maze,
To care, to guilt, unknown!

How ill exchang'd for riper times,
To feel the follies, or the crimes,

Of others or my own.

Ye tiny elves, that guiltless sport
Like linnets in the bush,
Ye little know the ills ye court,
When manhood is your wish.
The losses, the crosses,

That active man engage;
The fears all, the tears all,

Of dim-declining AGE.

BURNS.

ODE TO CONSUMPTION.

OH! thou most fatal of Pandora's train,
Consumption! silent cheater of the eye!—
Thou com'st not rob'd in agonizing pain,
Nor mark'st thy course with Death's delusive dye :
But silent and unnotic'd thou dost lie,

O'er life's soft springs thy venom dost diffuse;
And, while thou giv'st new lustre to the eye,—
While o'er the cheek are spread health's ruddy hues,
Even then life's little rest thy cruel pow'r subdues.

Oft I've beheld thee in the glow of youth,

Hid 'neath the blushing roses which there bloom'd, And dropp'd a tear; for then thy cank'ring tooth

I knew would never stay, till all consum'd
In the cold vault of death he were entombed.

But, oh! what sorrow did I feel, as swift,
Insidious ravager, I saw thee fly

Through fair Lucina's breast of whitest snow,
Preparing swift her passage to the sky!

Though still intelligence beam'd in the glance,
The liquid lustre, of her fine blue eye,

Yet soon did languid listlessness advance,

And soon she calmly sunk in death's repugnant trance!

Even when her end was swiftly drawing near,
And dissolution hover'd o'er her head,
Even then so beauteous did her form appear,
That none who saw her but, admiring, said,
"Sure, so much beauty never could be dead."

KIRKE WHITE.

THE SPECTRE.

WHEN night outspreads her sombre shade,
And dull-wing'd bats round yew-trees flit,
When moaning winds sigh through the glade,
And moaping owls on tombstones sit—

There stalks from yonder hillock's height,
A shroud-clad form of sickly hue,
With eyes that glare a ghastly light,
And hair dishevelled, dank with dew!

It moves: and bats a refuge seek

Beneath the grave's new risen mound, The raven opes her ebon beak

To croak a hoarse and dismal sound! The screech-owl screams a shrill lament, And watch-dogs in their kennels cower, With thunder's roll the air is rent,

In that confused and dreaded hour!

ANON.

WOMAN'S FIDELITY.

GONE from her cheek is the summer bloom,
And her breath has lost all its faint perfume,
And the gloss hath dropp'd from her golden hair,
And her cheek is pale, but no longer fair.

And the spirit that sate on her soft blue eye
Is struck with cold mortality;

And the smile that play'd on her lip hath fled,
And every grace hath now left the dead.