b.

With pallid cheek and eager prayer
And maniac laugh of dark despair
The widowed mother stood;
And, with white lips, an orphan throng
Rehearsed a fearful tale of wrong
And misery and blood.
And strong in virtue others came,
Unnumbered victims to proclaim
Of vengeance, perfidy, and dread,
Who slumbered with the silent dead.
The world might start, the sable plumes might wave,
But for that haughty king there was no grave.

O! ye who press life's crowded mart,
With hurrying step and bounding heart,
A solemn lesson glean;
Beware, lest, when ye cross that stream
Whose breaking surges farthest gleam,
No mortal eye hath seen,
Discordant voices wake the shore
The struggling spirit would explore,
And to the trembling soul deny
Its latest resting-place on high;
Our acts are Judges, that must meet us there
With seraph smiles of light, or fiendish glare.

THE HIGHLAND GIRL'S LAMENT.

The ancient Highlanders believed the spirits of their departed
friends continually present, and that their imagined appearances
and voices communicated warnings of approaching death.

Oh! set the bridal feast aside,
And bear the harp away;
The coronach must sound instead,
From solemn kirk-yard gray.

I heard last eve, at set of sun,
The death-bell on the gale.
It was no earthly melody:--
The eglantine grew pale;

And leaf and blossom seemed to thrill
With an unuttered prayer,
As, fraught with desolateness wild,
The strange notes stirred the air.

And on the rugged mountain height,
Where snow and sunbeam meet,
That never yet in storm or shine
Was trod by human feet,

A weird and spectral presence came
Between me and the light;
The waving of a shadowy hand
That faded into night.

I felt it was the first who left
Our little household band,--
The child, with waving locks of gold,
Now in the silent land.

And when the mist at morn arose
From Katrine's silvery wave,
A form of aspect ominous,
With pensive look and grave,

Moved from the waters towards the glen
Where stands the holly-tree;
'T was the bro