Thus wasted are the ranks of men—­
     Youth, Health, and Beauty fall;
     The ruthless ruin spreads around,
     And overwhelms us all.

     Behold where, round thy narrow house,
     The graves unnumber’d lie;
     The multitude that sleep below
     Existed but to die.

     Some, with the tottering steps of Age,
     Trod down the darksome way;
     And some, in youth’s lamented prime,
     Like thee were torn away: 

     Yet these, however hard their fate,
     Their native earth receives;
     Amid their weeping friends they died,
     And fill their fathers’ graves.

     From thy lov’d friends, when first thy heart
     Was taught by Heav’n to glow,
     Far, far remov’d, the ruthless stroke
     Surpris’d and laid thee low.

     At the last limits of our isle,
     Wash’d by the western wave,
     Touch’d by thy face, a thoughtful bard
     Sits lonely by thy grave.

     Pensive he eyes, before him spread
     The deep, outstretch’d and vast;
     His mourning notes are borne away
     Along the rapid blast.

     And while, amid the silent Dead
     Thy hapless fate he mourns,
     His own long sorrows freshly bleed,
     And all his grief returns: 

     Like thee, cut off in early youth,
     And flower of beauty’s pride,
     His friend, his first and only joy,
     His much lov’d Stella, died.

     Him, too, the stern impulse of Fate
     Resistless bears along;
     And the same rapid tide shall whelm
     The Poet and the Song.

     The tear of pity which he sheds,
     He asks not to receive;
     Let but his poor remains be laid
     Obscurely in the grave.

     His grief-worn heart, with truest joy,
     Shall meet he welcome shock: 
     His airy harp shall lie unstrung,
     And silent on the rock.

     O, my dear maid, my Stella, when
     Shall this sick period close,
     And lead the solitary bard
     To his belov’d repose?

The Bard At Inverary

     Whoe’er he be that sojourns here,
     I pity much his case,
     Unless he comes to wait upon
     The Lord their God, His Grace.

     There’s naething here but Highland pride,
     And Highland scab and hunger: 
     If Providence has sent me here,
     ’Twas surely in his anger.

Epigram To Miss Jean Scott

     O had each Scot of ancient times
     Been, Jeanie Scott, as thou art;
     The bravest heart on English ground
     Had yielded like a coward.

On The Death Of John M’Leod, Esq,

Brother to a young Lady, a particular friend of the Author’s.

     Sad thy tale, thou idle page,
     And rueful thy alarms: 
     Death tears the brother of her love
     From Isabella’s arms.