A DREAM.

WELL may sleep present us fictions, Since our waking moments teem With such fanciful convictions

As make life itself a dream. Half our daylight faith's a fable; Sleep disports with shadows too, Seeming in their turn as stable

As the world we wake to view.
Ne'er by day did Reason's mint
Give my thoughts a clearer print
Of assured reality,

Than was left by Phantasy
Stamped and coloured on my sprite
In a dream of yesternight.

In a bark, methought, lone steering,
I was cast on Ocean's strife ;·
This, 'twas whispered in my hearing,
Meant the sea of life.

Sad regrets from past existence

Came, like gales of chilling breath;
Shadowed in the forward distance
Lay the land of death.

Now seeming more, now less remote,
On that dim-seen shore, methought,
I beheld two hands a space
Slow unshroud a spectre's face;
And my flesh's hair upstood,-
"Twas mine own similitude.

But my soul revived at seeing

Ocean, like an emerald spark, Kindle, while an air-dropt being Smiling steered my bark.

Heaven-like-yet he looked as human
As supernal beauty can,

More compassionate than woman,
Lordly more than man.

And as some sweet clarion's breath
Stirs the soldier's scorn of death-
So his accents bade me brook
The spectre's eyes of icy look,
Till it shut them-turned its head,
Like a beaten foe, and fled.

Types not this," I said, " fair spirit!
That my death-hour is not come ?
Say, what days shall I inherit?—
Tell my soul their sum."

"No," he said, " yon phantom's aspect,
Trust me, would appal thee worse,
Held in clearly measured prospect :—
Ask not for a curse!

Make not, for I overhear

Thine unspoken thoughts as clear
As thy mortal ear could catch

The close brought tickings of a watch.
Make not the untold request

That's now revolving in thy breast.

""Tis to live again, remeasuring
Youth's years, like a scene rehearsed,
In thy second lifetime treasuring
Knowledge from the first.

Hast thou felt, poor self-deceiver !
Life's career so void of pain,

As to wish its fitful fever

New begun again?

Could experience, ten times thine,
Pain from Being disentwine—

1

Threads by Fate together spun?

Could thy flight heaven's lightning shun?
No, nor could thy foresight's glance

'Scape the myriad shafts of chance.

"Would'st thou bear again Love's trouble-
Friendship's death-dissevered ties;
Toil to grasp or miss the bubble

Of ambition's prize?

Say thy life's new-guided action

Flowed from Virtue's fairest springs-
Still would Envy and Detraction
Double not their stings?

Worth itself is but a charter

To be mankind's distinguished martyr.'
-I caught the moral, and cried, "Hail,
Spirit! let us onward sail

Envying, fearing, hating none,
Guardian Spirit, steer me on!"

REULLURA*.

STAR of the morn and eve,

Reullura shone like thee,

And well for her might Aodh grieve,
The dark-attired Culdee.†

Peace to their shades! the pure Culdees

Were Albyn's earliests priests of God,

* Reullura, in Gaelic. signifies "beautiful star."

†The Culdees were the primitive clergy of Scotland, and apparently her only clergy from the sixth to the eleventh century. They were of Irish origin, and their monastery on the island of Iona or Ikolmill, was the seminary of Christianity in North Britain. Presbyterian writers have wished to prove them to have been a sort of Presbyters, strangers to the Roman Church and Episcopacy. It seems to be established that they were not enemies to Episcopacy:-but that they were not slavishly subjected to Rome, like the clergy of later periods, appears by their resisting the Papal ordinances respecting the celibacy of religious men, on which account they were ultimately displaced by the Scottish sovereigns to make way for more Popish canons.

Ere yet an island of her seas
By foot of Saxon monk was trode,
Long ere her churchmen by bigotry
Were barred from holy wedlock's tie.
'Twas then that Aodh, famed afar,

In Iona preached the word with power,
And Reullura, beauty's star,

Was the partner of his bower.

But, Aodb, the roof lies low,

And the thistle-down waves bleaching, And the bat flits to and fro

Where the Gael once heard thy preaching; And fall'n in is each columned isle

Where the chiefs and the people knelt.
"Twas near that temple's goodly pile
That honoured of men they dwelt.
For Aodh was wise in the sacred law,
And bright Reullura's eyes oft saw
The veil of fate uplifted.

Alas, with what visions of awe

Her soul in that hour was gifted

When pale in the temple and faint,
With Aodh she stood alone
By the statue of an aged saint!
Fair sculptured was the stone,
It bore a crucifix;

Fame said it once had graced
A Christian temple, which the Picts
In the Briton's land laid waste:
The Pictish men, by St. Columb taught,
Had hither the holy relic brought.

Reullura eyed the statue's face,

And cried, "It is, he shall come,

"Even he in this very place,

For, wo to the Gael people!

Ulvfagre is on the main,

And Iona shall look from tower and steeple
On the coming ships of the Dane;

And, dames and daughters, shall all your locks
With the spoiler's grasp entwine?

No! some shall have shelter in caves and rocks,
And the deep sea shall be mine.
Baffled by me shall the Dane return,

And here shall his torch in the temple burn.
Until that holy man shall plough

The waves from Innisfail.

His sail is on the deep e'en now,

And swells to the southern gale."

"Ah! knowest thou not, my bride,"

The holy Aodh said,

"That the saint whose form we stand beside
Has for ages slept with the dead?”
"He liveth, he liveth," she said again,

"For the span of his life tenfold extends Beyond the wonted years of men.

He sits by the graves of well-loved friends
That died ere thy grandsire's grandsire's birth;
The oak is decayed with old age on earth,
Whose acorn-seed had been planted by him;
And his parents remember the day of dread
When the sun on the cross looked dim,
And the graves gave up their dead

Yet preaching from clime to clime,
He hath roamed the earth for ages,
And hither he shall come in time
When the wrath of the heathen rages,
In time a remnant from the sword-

Ah! but a remnant to deliver: