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Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,
Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe!
Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear,
Closed her bright eye, and curbed her high career;-
Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell,

And Freedom' shrieked-as KOSCIUSKO' fell!

The sun went down, nor ceased the carnage there,
Tumultuous murder shook the midnight air-
On Prague's proud arch' the fires of Ruin' glow,
His blood-dyed waters' murmuring far below;
The storm' prevails, the rampart' yields a way,
Bursts the wild cry of horror and dismay!
Hark! as the smouldering piles with thunder' fall,
A thousand shrieks for hopeless mercy call!
Earth shook-red meteors flashed along the sky,
And conscious naturel shuddered at the cry!

Departed spirits of the mighty dead!

Yel that at Marathon' and Leuctra' bled!
Friends of the world! restore your swords to man,
Fight' in the sacred cause, and lead the van!
Yet for Sarmatia's tears of blood' atone,
And make her arm' puissant as your own!
Oh! once again' to Freedom's cause' return
The patriot TELL-the BRUCE of BANNOCKBURN!

CAMPBELL

THE GLADIATOR.

I SEE before me the Gladiator lie: he leans upon his hand-bis manly brow consents to death, but conquers agony, and his drooped head sinks gradually low-and through his sides the last drops, ebbing flow from the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, like the first of a thunder-shower; and now the arena swims around him!-He is gone, ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. He heard it, but he heeded not: his eyes were with his heart, and that was far away; he recked not of the life he lost, nor prize; but where his rude hut by the Danube lay, there were his young barbarians all at play, there was their Dacian mother-he, their sire, butchered to make a Roman holiday! All rushed with his blood. Shall he expire, and unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!

BYRON.

TELL'S ADDRESS TO HIS NATIVE MOUNTAINS.

YE crags and peaks, I'm with you once again,

I hold to you the hands you first beheld,
To show they still are free. Methinks I hear
A spirit in your echoes answer me,
And bid your tenant welcome to his home
Again!-O sacred forms, how proud you look,

THE RUINED COTTAGE.

How high you lift your heads into the sky,
How huge you are, how mighty, and how free!

Ye are the things that tower, that shine-whose smile
Makes glad-whose frown is terrible-whose forms,
Robed or unrobed, do all the impress wear

Of awe divine! Ye guards of liberty,
I'm with you once again! I call to you
With all my voice! I hold my hands to you,
To show they still are free! I rush to you,
As though I could embrace you!

Scaling yonder peak,
I saw an eagle wheeling near its brow,
O'er the abyss: his broad expanded wings
Lay calm and motionless upon the air,
As if he floated there without their aid,
By the sole act of his unlorded will,

That buoyed him proudly up. Instinctively
I bent my bow; yet kept he rounding still
His airy circle, as in the delight

Of measuring the ample range beneath

And round about; absorbed, he heeded not

The death that threatened him. I could not shoot-
'Twas liberty! I turned my bow aside,

And let him soar away.

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KNOWLES.

THE RUINED COTTAGE.

NONE will dwell in that cottage, for they say oppression reft it from an honest man, and that a curse clings to it; hence the vine trails its green weight of leaves upon the ground; hence weeds are in that garden; hence the hedge, once sweet with honeysuckle, is half dead; and hence the grey moss on the apple tree. One once dwelt there, who had been in his youth a soldier; and when many years had passed, he sought his native village, and sat down to end his days in peace. He had one child-a little laughing thing, whose large dark eyes, he said, were like the mother's he had left buried in a stranger's land. And time went on in confort and content:-and that fair girl had grown far taller than the red-rose tree her father planted her first English birth-day; and he had trained it up against an ash till it became his pride;-it was so rich in blossom and in beauty, it was called the tree of Isabel. Twas an appeal to all the better feelings of the heart, to mark their quiet happiness;their home-in truth a home of love; and, more than all, to see them on the Sabbath, when they came among the first to church, and Isabel, with her bright colour and her clear glad eyes, bowed down so meekly in the house of prayer; and in the hymn her sweet voice audible: her father looked so fond of her, and then from her looked up so thankfully to Heaven! And their small cottage was so very neat; their garden filled with fruits, and herbs, and flowers; and in the winter there was no fireside so cheerful as their own.

But other days and other fortunes came-an evil power! They bore against it cheerfully, and hoped for better times; but ruin

came at last; and the old soldier left his own dear home, and left it for a prison! 'Twas in June, one of June's brightest days:-the bee, the bird, the butterfly, were on their lightest wings; the fruits had their first tinge of summer light; the sunny sky, the very leaves seemed glad; and the old man looked back upon his cottage, and wept aloud. They hurried him away and the dear child that would not leave his side. They led him from the sight of the blue heaven and the green trees, into a low, dark cell, the windows shutting out the blessed sun with iron grating; and for the first time he threw him on his bed, and could not hear his Isabel's good night! But the next morn she was the earliest at the prison gate, the last on whom it closed; and her sweet voice and sweeter smile made him forget to pine.

She brought him every morning fresh wild flowers; but every morning could he mark her cheek grow paler and more pale, and her low tones get fainter and more faint, and a cold dew was on the hand he held. One day, he saw the sunshine through the grating of his cell-yet Isabel came not; at every sound his heart-beat took away his breath-yet still she came not near him! For one sad day he marked the dull street through the iron bars that shut him from the world; at length he saw a coffin carried carelessly along, and he grew desperate-he forced the bars, and he stood on the street free and alone! He had no aim, no wish for liberty-he only felt one want, to see the corpse that had no mourners. When they set it down, ere it was lowered into the new-dug grave, a rush of passion came upon his soul, and he tore off the lid and saw the face of Isabel, and knew he had no child! He lay down by the coffin quietly-his heart was broken! MRS. MACLEAN.

THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT.

[ROBERT BURNS, Scotland's greatest poet, was born near Ayr in 1759, and died in 1796. He received but a limited English education, to which he afterwards added an acquaintance with Latin, French, and Mathematics. After having been unfortunate in the various attempts to gain a living by agricultural and other pursuits, he was appointed an excise officer. As a poet, his rich humour, pathos, and energy, have never been surpassed.]

THE cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
They round the ingle form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,
The big ha' Bible-ance his father's pride;

His bonnet reverently is laid aside,

His lyart haffets, wearing thin and bare; Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,

He wales a portion with judicious care;

And "Let us worship God!" he says, with solemn air.

They chaunt their artless notes in simple guise,
They tune their hearts-by far the noblest aim:
Ferhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise,

Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;

THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT.

Or noble Elgin beats the heavenward flame,
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays;
Compared with these, Italian trills are tame:
The tickled ears no heartfelt raptures raise;
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.

The priest-like father reads the sacred page.
How Abram was the friend of God on high;
Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage

With Amalek's ungracious progeny;
Or how the royal Bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;
Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire;

Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,

How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;
How He, who bore in heaven the second name,
Had not on earth whereon to lay his head;
How his first followers and servants sped:
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:

How he, who lone in Patmos banished,

Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand;

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And heard great Babylon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command.

Then, kneeling down to heaven's Eternal King,

The saint, the father, and the husband prays;

Hope springs exulting on triumphant wing,
That thus they all shall meet in future days;

There ever bask in uncreated rays,

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear; Together hymning their Creator's praise,

In such society-yet still more dear;

While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere.

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From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad:
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,
"An honest man's the noblest work of God;"
And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road,
The cottage leaves the palace far behind;
What is a lordling's pomp?-a cumbrous load,
Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined!

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to heaven is sent;

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!
And, oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!

Then, howe'er crowns and cornets be rent,
A virtuous populace may rise the while,

And stand a wall of fire, around their much-loved Isle.

Oh, thou! who poured the patriotic tide

That streamed through Wallace's undaunted heart,
Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride,

Or nobly die, the second glorious part,
(The patriot's God, peculiarly thou art;
His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!)
Oh, never, never, Scotia's realm desert;
But still the patriot, and the patriot bard,

In bright succession raise-her ornament and guard!

BURNS.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

I LOOKED far back' into other years, and lo! in bright array, as in a dream, the forms of ages! passed away.

I saw,

It was a stately convent, with its old' and lofty walls,

And gardens, with their broad' green walks, where soft' the footstep falls;

And o'er the antique dial-stones! the creeping shadow passed,
And all around' the noon-day sun' a drowsy radiance' cast.
No sound of busy life! was heard, save, from the cloister' dim,
The tinkling of the silver bell, or the sisters' holy hymn,
And there five noble maidens sat, beneath the orchard trees,
In that first budding spring of youth, when all its prospects' please;
And little recked they, when they sang, or knelt at vesper-prayers,
That Scotland' knew no prouder names-held none more dear
than theirs;-

And little even the loveliest thought, before the Virgin's shrine,
Of royal blood, and high descent' from the ancient! Stuart line;
Calmly her happy days! flew on, uncounted' in their flight,
And, as they flew, they left! behind' a long-continuing light.

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The scene was changed. It was the court- the gay court of
Bourbon-
And 'neath a thousand silver lamps, a thousand courtiers' throng;
And proudly kindles! Henry's eye-well pleased, I ween, to see
The land' assemble all its wealth of grace' and chivalry;-
Grey Montmorency, o'er whose head has passed a storm of years,
Strong in himself and children' stands, the first' among his peers;
And next' the Guises, who so well' fame's steepest heights' assailed,
And walked ambition's diamond ridge, where bravest hearts' have
failed-

And higher yet' their path shall be, stronger! shall wax' their might,
For before them' Montmorency's star' shall pale its waning light.
Here Louis, Prince of Condé, wears his all-unconquered sword,
With great Caligni by his side-each name' a household word!
And there walks she of Medicis-that proud' Italian line,
The mother' of a race of kings-the haughty Catherine!
The forms that follow in her train, a glorious sunshine make-
A milky way of stars! that grace a comet's glittering wake;
But fairer farl than all the rest, who bask on fortune's tide,
Effulgent' in the light of youth, is she, the new-made bride!
The homage of a thousand hearts-the fond, deep love of one-
The hopes that dance around a life! whose charms are but begun-

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