DEAR is my little native vale,

The ring-dove builds and murmurs there;

Close by my cot she tells her tale

To every passing villager.

The squirrel leaps from tree to tree,
And shells his nuts at liberty.

In orange-groves and myrtle-bowers, That breathe a gale of fragrance round,

I charin the fairy-footed hours

With my loved lute's romantic sound;

Or crowns of living laurel weave,

For those that win the race at eve.

The shepherd's horn at break of day, The ballet danced in twilight glade, The canzonet and roundelay

Sung in the silent green-wood shade; These simple joys, that never fail,

Shall bind me to my native vale.

AN INSCRIPTION.

SHEPHERD, or Huntsman, or worn Mariner,
Whate'er thou art, who wouldst allay thy thirst,
Drink and be glad. This cistern of white stone,
Arched, and o'erwrought with many a sacred verse,
This iron cup chained for the general use,

And these rude seats of earth within the grove,
Were given by FATIMA. Borne hence a bride,
'Twas here she turned from her beloved sire,
To see his face no more.* Oh, if thou canst,
("Tis not far off) visit his tomb with flowers;
And with a drop of this sweet water fill

The two small cells scooped in the marble there,
That birds may come and drink upon his grave,
Making it holy! +

* See an anecdote related by Pausanias. iii. 20.

A Turkish superstition.

WRITTEN IN

THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND,

SEPTEMBER 2, 1812.

BLUE was the loch, the clouds were gone,

Ben-Lomond in his glory shone,

When, Luss, I left thee; when the breeze

Bore me from thy silver sands,

Thy kirk-yard wall among the trees,

Where, grey with age, the dial stands ;

That dial so well-known to me!

-Tho' many a shadow it had shed,

Beloved Sister, since with thee

The legend on the stone was read.

The fairy-isles fled far away;

That with its woods and uplands green,
Where shepherd-huts are dimly seen,

And songs are heard at close of day;
That too, the deer's wild covert, fled,
And that, the asylum of the dead:

While, as the boat went merrily,

Much of ROB Roy the boat-man told;

His arm that fell below his knee,

His cattle-ford and mountain-hold.

Tarbat,† thy shore I climbed at last;

And, thy shady region passed,

Upon another shore I stood,

And looked upon another flood; ‡
Great Ocean's self! ('Tis He who fills
That vast and awful depth of hills ;)
Where many an elf was playing round,
Who treads unshod his classic ground;
And speaks, his native rocks among,
AS FINGAL spoke, and OSSIAN sung.

Night fell; and dark and darker grew

That narrow sea, that narrow sky,

As o'er the glimmering waves we flew ; The sea-bird rustling, wailing by.

* A famous out-law.

+ Signifying in the Erse language an Isthmus. Loch-Long.