The land of the hardy thistle.

Isle of the freeborn, honour'd and blest,
Isle of beauty, in innocence dress'd,
The loveliest star on ocean's breast
Is the land of the hardy thistle.

Fair are those isles of Indian bloom,
Whose flowers perpetual breathe perfume;
But dearer far are the braes o' broom
Where blooms the hardy thistle.

No luscious fig-tree blossoms there,
No slaves the scented shrubb'ry rear;
Her sons are free as the mountain air
That shakes the hardy thistle.

Lovely 's the tint o' an eastern sky,
And lovely the lands that 'neath it lie;
But I wish to live, and I wish to die
In the land of the hardy thistle!

ROBERT L. MALONE.

Robert L. Malone was a native of Anstruther, in Fife, where he was born
in 1812. His father was a captain in the navy, and afterwards was
employed in the Coast Guard. He ultimately settled at Rothesay, in Bute.
Receiving a common school education, Robert entered the navy in his
fourteenth year. He served on board the gun-brig _Marshall_, which
attended the Fisheries department in the west; next in the Mediterranean
ocean; and latterly in South America. Compelled, from impaired health,
to renounce the seafaring life, after a service of ten years, he
returned to his family at Rothesay, but afterwards settled in the town
of Greenock. In 1845, he became a clerk in the Long-room of the Customs
at Greenock, an appointment which he retained till nigh the period of
his death. A lover of poetry from his youth, he solaced the hours of
sickness by the composition of verses. He published, in 1845, a
duodecimo volume of poetry, entitled, "The Sailor's Dream, and other
Poems," a work which was well received. His death took place at Greenock
on the 6th of July 1850, in his thirty-eighth year. Of modest and
retiring dispositions, Malone was unambitious of distinction as a poet.
His style is bold and animated, and some of his pieces evince
considerable power.

THE THISTLE OF SCOTLAND.

AIR--_"Humours o' Glen."_

Though fair blooms the rose in gay Anglia's bowers,
And green be thy emblem, thou gem of the sea,
The greenest, the sweetest, the fairest of flowers,
Is the thistle--the thistle of Scotland, for me!

Far lovelier flowers glow, the woodlands adorning,
And breathing perfume over moorland and lea,
But there breathes not a bud on the freshn