As chorus'd to the high-strung harp his words of mightier song,
Lest, hapless chance! should rise, above the swelling of the tide,
A remnant of the ambitious love that sought a noble bride.

But I, alas! no language find, of Sassenach or Gael,
Nor note of music in the land, my cureless woe to quail.
And art thou gone, without a word, without a kindly look
Of smiling comfort, on the bard whose life thy beauty shook?

Not so it fared with Cormac; for thus the tale is told,
That never, to the last, he brook'd desertion's bitter cold.
His comrades sorrow'd round him; his dear vouchsafed a kiss--
He almost thought he heard her sigh, "_Come back again to bliss!_"

THE LAST LAY OF LOVE.

This was composed when Ross was dying, and probably
when he was aware of his approaching end. He died of
consumption, precipitated by the espousals of his
mistress to another lover.

Reft the charm of the social shell
By the touch of the sorrowful mood;
And already the worm, in her cell,
Is preparing the birth of her brood.

She blanches the hue of my cheek,
And exposes my desperate love;
Nor needs it that death should bespeak
The hurt no remeid can remove.

The step, 'twas a pleasure to trace,
Even that has withdrawn from the scene;
And, now, not a breeze can displace
A leaf from its summit of green

So prostrate and fallen to lie,
So far from the branch where it hung,
As, in dust and in helplessness, I,
From the hope to which passion had clung.

Yet, benison bide! where thy choice
Deems its bliss and its treasure secure,
May the months in thy blessings rejoice,
While their rise and their wane shall endure!

For me, a poor warrior, in blood
By thy arrow-shot steep'd, I am prone,
The glow of ambition subdued,
The weapons of rivalry gone.

Yet, cruel to mock me, the base
Who scoff at the name of the bard,
To scorn the degree of my race,
Their toil and their travail, is hard.

Since one, a bold yeoman ne'er drew
A furrow unstraight or unpaid;
And the other, to righteousness true,
Hung even the scales of his trade.

And I--ah! they should not compel
To waken the theme of my praise;
I can boast over hundreds, to tell
Of a chief in the conflict of lays.

And now it is