Loud twang’d thy bow,
mighty youth, in the foray,
Dread gleam’d thy brand
in the proud field of glory;
And when heroes sat round
in the Psalter of Tara,
His counsel was sage as was
fatal his arrow.
When in war’s loud commotion
the hostile Dane landed,
Or seen on the ocean with
white sail expanded,
Like thee, swoll’n stream,
down our steep vale that roarest,
Fierce was the chieftain that
harass’d them sorest.
Proud stem of our ancient
line, nipt while in budding,
Like sweet flowers’
too early gem spring-fields bestudding,
Our noble pine ’s fall’n,
that waved on our mountain,—
Our mighty rock dash’d
from the brink of our fountain.
Our lady is lonely, our halls
are deserted—
The mighty is fallen, our
hope is departed—
Loud wail for the fate from
our clan that did sever,
Whom we shall behold again
no more for ever.
THE DEPARTURE OF SUMMER.
Adieu, lovely Summer!
I see thee declining,
I sigh, for thy
exit is near;
Thy once glowing beauties
by Autumn are pining,
Who now presses
hard on thy rear.
The late blowing flowers now
thy pale cheek adorning,
Droop sick as
they nod on the lea;
The groves, too, are silent,
no minstrel of morning
Shrill warbles
his song from the tree.
Aurora peeps silent, and sighs
a lorn widow,
No warbler to
lend her a lay,
No more the shrill lark quits
the dew-spangled meadow,
As wont for to
welcome the day.
Sage Autumn sits sad now on
hill, dale, and valley,
Each landscape
how pensive its mien!
They languish, they languish!
I see them fade daily,
And losing their
liv’ry of green.
O Virtue, come waft me on
thy silken pinions,
To where purer
streamlets still flow,
Where summer, unceasing, pervades
thy dominions,
Nor stormy bleak
wint’ry winds blow.
SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.
Sir Walter Scott, the most chivalrous of Scottish poets, and the most illustrious of British novelists, was born in Edinburgh, on the 15th of August 1771. His father, Walter Scott, Writer to the Signet, was descended from a younger branch of the baronial house of the Scotts of Harden, of which Lord Polwarth is the present representative. On his mother’s side his progenitors were likewise highly respectable: his maternal grandfather, Dr John Rutherford, was Professor of the Practice of Physic in the University of Edinburgh, and his mother’s brother, Dr Daniel Rutherford, an eminent chemist, afterwards occupied the chair of Botany. His mother was a person of a vigorous and cultivated mind. Of a family of twelve children, born to his parents, six of whom survived infancy, Walter only evinced the possession