Where Robin Hood, the outlaw bold,
Was wont his sylvan courts to hold;
And there, as musing deep I lay,
Would steal my little soul away,
And all thy pictures represent,
Of siege and solemn tournament;
Or bear me to the magic scene
Where, clad in greaves and gaberdine,
The warrior night of chivalry
Made many a fierce enchanter flee,
And bore the high-born dame a way,
Long held the fell magician's prey;
Or oft would tell the shuddering tale
Of murders, and of goblins pale
Haunting the guilty baron's side
(Whose floors with secret blood were dyed,
Which o'er the vaulted corridor
On stormy nights were heard to roar,
By old domestic, waken'd wide
By the angry winds that chide;
Or else the mystic tale would tell
Of Greensleeve, or of Blue-beard fell.

SONNET.

GIVE me a cottage on some Cambrian wild, Where, far from cities, I may spend my days And, by the beauties of the scene beguiled,

May pity man's pursuits, and shun his ways. While on the rock I mark the browsing goat, List to the mountain-torrent's distant noise, Or the hoarse bittern's solitary note,

I shall not want the world's delusive joys: But with my little scrip, my book, my lyre,

Shall think my lot complete, nor covet more; And when, with time, shall wane the vital fire,

I'll raise my pillow on the desert shore, And lay me down to rest where the wild wave Shall make sweet music o'er my lonely grave.

TO CONTEMPLATION.
COME, pensive sage, who lov'st to dwell
In some retired Lapponian cell,
Where, far from noise and riot rude
Resides sequester'd Solitude,
Come, and o'er my longing soul
Throw thy dark and russet stole,
And open to my duteous eyes
The volume of thy mysteries.

I will meet thee on the hill,
Where, with printless footsteps, still
The morning, in her buskin grey,
Springs upon her eastern way;
While the frolic zephyrs stir,
Playing with the gossamer,
And on ruder pinions borne,
Shake the dew-drops from the thorn.
There, as o'er the fields we pass,
Brushing with hasty feet the grass,
We will startle from her nest
The lively lark with speckled breast,
And hear the floating clouds among,
Her gale-transported matin song,

Or on the upland stile embower'd,
With fragrant hawthorn snowy flower'd,
Will sauntering sit, and listen still
To the herdsman's oaten quill,
Wafted from the plain below;
Or the heifer's frequent low;
Or the milkmaid in the grove,
Singing of one that died for love:
Or when the noontide heats oppress,
We will seek the dark recess,

Where, in the embower'd translucent stream,
The cattle shun the sultry beam,
And o'er us, on the marge reclined,
The drowsy fly her horn shall wind,
While Echo, from her ancient oak,
Shall answer to the woodman's stroke;
Or the little peasant's song,
Wandering lone the glens among,
His artless lip with berries dyed,
And feet through ragged shoes descried.

But, oh! when evening's virgin queen
Sits on her fringed throne serene,
And mingling whispers, rising near,
Steal on the still reposing ear:
While distant brooks decaying round,
Augment the mix'd dissolving sound,
And the zephyr, flitting by,
Whispers mystic harmony,
We will seek the woody lane,
By the hamlet, on the plain,
Where the weary rustic nigh
Shall whistle his wild melody,
And the creaking wicket oft

Shall echo from the neighbouring croft;
And as we trace the green path lone,
With moss and rank weeds overgrown,
We will muse on pensive lore

Till the full soul, brimming o'er,
Shall in our upturn'd eyes appear,
Embodied in a quivering tear :
Or else, serenely silent, set
By the brawling rivulet,
Which on its calm unruffled breast,
Bears the old mossy arch impress'd,
That clasps its secret stream of glass
Half hid in shrubs and waving grass,
The wood-nymph's lone secure retreat,
Unpress'd by fawn or sylvan's feet,
We'll watch, in eve's ethereal braid,
The rich vermilion slowly fade;
Or catch, faint twinkling from afar,
The first glimpse of the eastern star,
Fair Vesper, mildest lamp of light,
That heralds in imperial night;
Meanwhile, upon our wandering car,
Shall rise, though low, yet sweetly clear,
The distant sounds of pastoral lute
Invoking soft the sober suit

Of dimmest darkness-fitting well
With love or sorrow's pensive spell
(So erst did music's silver tone
Wake slumbering Chaos on his throne.)
And haply then, with sudden swell,
Shall roar the distant curfew-bell,
While in the castle's mouldering tower
The hooting owl is heard to pour
VOL. II.-36

Her melancholy song, and scare
Dull Silence brooding in the air.
Meanwhile her dusk and slumbering car
Black-suited Night drives on from far,
And Cynthia, 'merging from her rear
Arrests the waxing darkness drear,
And summons to her silent call,
Sweeping in their airy pall,
The unshrived ghosts in fairy trance,
To join her moonshine morris-dance:
While around the mystic ring

The shadowy shapes elastic spring,
Then with a passing shriek they fly,
Wrapt in mists, along the sky,
And oft are by the shepherd seen,
In his lone night-watch on the green.

Then, hermit, let us turn our feet
To the low abbey's still retreat,
Embower'd in the distant glen,
Far from the haunts of busy men,
Where, as we sit upon the tomb,
The glow-worm's light may gild the gloom
And show to Fancy's saddest eye,
Where some lost hero's ashes lie,
And oh! as through the mouldering arch,
With ivy fill'd and weeping larch,
The night-gale whispers sadly clear,
Speaking drear things to Fancy's ear,
We'll hold communion with the shade
Of some deep-wailing ruin'd maid-
Or call the ghost of Spenser down,
To tell of woe and Fortune's frown;
And bid us cast the eye of hope
Beyond this bad world's narrow scope.
Or if these joys, to us denied,

To linger by the forest's side;

Or in the meadow, or the wood,

Or by the lone romantic flood;

Let us in the busy town,

When sleep's dull streams the people drown,
Far from drowsy pillows flee,

And turn the church's massy key;
Then, as through the painted glass
The moon's faint beams obscurely pass;

And darkly on the trophied wall,
Her faint ambiguous shadows fall;
Let us, while the faint winds wail,
Through the long reluctant aisie,
As we pace with reverence meet,
Count the echoings of our feet:
While from the tombs, with confess'd breath,
Distinct responds the voice of death.
If thou, mild sage, wilt condescend

Thus on my footsteps to attend,
To thee my lonely lamp shall burn,
By fallen Genius' sainted urn,
As o'er the scroll of Time I pore,
And sagely spell of ancient lore,
Till I can rightly guess of all
That Plato could to memory call,
And scan the formless views of things,
Or with old Egypt's fetter'd kings,
Arrange the mystic trains that shine
in night's high philosophic mine;
And to thy name shall e'er belong
The honours of undying song.

JOHN WILSON was born in Paisley, May 18, 1785. His father was a manufacturer. John was sent, for his early education, to the parish of Mearns, in Renfrewshire, and afterward to Glenorchy, in the Highlands. The wild scenery of these places did much to develop his poetical and descriptive powers. He passed four years at Glasgow University, and in 1803 went to Oxford, where he soon became distinguished equally for scholarship and for supremacy in athletic sports. In 1806 he received the Newdigate prize for a poem.

About 1810 he settled at Elleray, in Cumberland, for the special purpose of being near Wordsworth, with whom, as well as with De Quincey, Coleridge, and Southey, he soon became intimate. In that year also he married Miss Jane Penny, of Liverpool.

Wilson now devoted himself to poetry, and published "The Isle of Palms" in 1812 and "The City of the Plague" in 1816, both of which attracted considerable attention. The latter was a dramatic poem, the scene being laid in London at the time of the great plague. I

Meanwhile he had lost the fortune left him by his father, and removed to Edinburgh. When Blackwood's Magazine was started, in 1817, Wilson and Lockhart became its editors; and Wilson, as Christopher North," continued to be a contributor for more than thirty years, and was the principal author of the celebrated "Noctes Ambrosianæ." In 1822 he published a volume of tales, still popular, entitled "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life," and in 1842 "The Recreations of Christopher North."

In 1820 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. In his last years he received a pension of £200. He died in Edinburgh, April 3, 1854.

It is as a prose writer, and not as a poet, that Wilson maintains a high place in literature. He was somewhat gruff, and perhaps merited Tennyson's epithet of "Crusty Christopher." Numerous stories are told of his taking off his coat in the market-place to chastise some loafer or huckster for his ill deeds, which for a professor of moral philosophy was certainly a unique performance.

TO A SLEEPING CHILD.

ART thou a thing of mortal birth,
Whose happy home is on our earth?
Does human blood with life imbue
Those wandering veins of heavenly blue,
That stray along thy forehead fair,
Lost 'mid a gleam of golden hair?
Oh! can that light and airy breath
Steal from a being doom'd to death;
Those features to the grave be sent
In sleep thus mutely eloquent;

Or, art thou what thy form would seem,
The phantom of a blessed dream?
A human shape I feel thou art,
I feel it, at my beating heart,

Those tremors both of soul and sense
Awoke by infant innocence!
Though dear the forms by fancy wove,
We love them with a transient love;
Thoughts from the living world intrude
Even on her deepest solitude:
But, lovely child thy magic stole
At once into my inmost soul,
With feelings as thy beauty fair,
And left no other vision there.

To me thy parents are unknown;
Glad would they be their child to own!
And well they must have loved before,
If since thy birth they loved not more.
Thou art a branch of noble stem,
And, seeing thee, I figure them.
What many a childless one would give,
If thou in their still home wouldst live!

Though in thy face no family-line

Might sweetly say, "This babe is mine!"
In time thou wouldst become the same
As their own child-all but the name!

How happy must thy parents be
Who daily live in sight of thee!
Whose hearts no greater pleasure seek
Than see thee smile, and hear thee speak,
And feel all natural griefs beguiled
By thee, their fond, their duteous child,
What joy must in their souls have stirr'd
When thy first broken words were heard,
Words, that, inspired by Heaven, express'd
The transports dancing in thy breast!
As for thy smile!-thy lip, cheek, brow,
Even while I gaze, are kindling now.

I call'd thee duteous; am I wrong?
No! truth, I feel, is in my song:
Duteous thy heart's still beatings move
To God, to Nature, and to Love!
To God-for thou a harmless child
Hast kept his temple undefiled:
To Nature-for thy tears and sighs
Obey alone her mysteries:

To Love-for fiends of hate might see
Thou dwell'st in love, and love in thee!
What wonder then, though in thy dreams
Thy face with mystic meaning beams!

Oh! that my spirit's eye could see
Whence burst those gleams of ecstacy!
That light of dreaming soul appears
To play from thoughts above thy years.
Thou smilest as if thy soul were soaring
To Heaven, and Heaven's God adoring!

And who can tell what visions high
May bless an infant's sleeping eye?
What brighter throne can brightness find
To reign on than an infant's mind,
Ere sin destroy, or error dim,
The glory of the Seraphim!

But now thy changing smiles express
Intelligible happiness:

I feel my soul thy soul partake.
What grief! if thou shouldst now awake!
With infants happy as thyself
I see thee bound, a playful elf:
I see thou art a darling child
Among thy playmates, bold and wild.
They love thee well; thou art the queen
Of all their sports, in bower or green;
And if thou livest to woman's height,
In thee will friendship, love delight.

And live thou surely must; thy life
Is far too spiritual for the strife
Of mortal pain, nor could disease
Find heart to prey on smiles like these.
Oh! thou wilt be an angel bright!
To those thou lovest, a saving light!
The staff of age, the help sublime,
Of erring youth, and stubborn prime;
And when thou goest to Heaven again,
Thy vanishing be like the strain
Of airy harp, so soft the tone

The ear scarce knows when it is gone!

Thrice blessed he! whose stars design
His spirit pure to lean on thine;
And watchful share, for days and years,
Thy sorrows, joys, sighs, smiles, and tears!
For good and guiltless as thou art,
Some transient griefs will touch thy heart;
Griefs that along thy alter'd face
Will breathe a more subduing grace,
Than ev'n those looks of joy that lie
On the soft cheek of infancy.

Though looks, God knows, are cradled there
That guilt might cleanse, or soothe despair.

O vision fair! that I could be
Again, as young, as pure as thee!

Vain wish! the rainbow's radiant form
May view, but cannot brave the storm;
Years can bedim the gorgeous dyes
That paint the bird of paradise,
And years, so fate hath order'd, roll
Clouds o'er the summer of the soul.
Yet, sometimes, sudden sights of grace,
Such as the gladness of thy face,
O sinless babe! by God are given
To charm the wanderer back to Heaven.

No common impulse hath me led
To this green spot, thy quiet bed,
Where, by mere gladness overcome,
In sleep thou dreamest of thy home.
When to the lake I would have gone,
A wondrous beauty drew me on,
Such beauty as the spirit sees

In glittering fields, and moveless trees,
After a warm and silent shower
Ere falls on earth the twilight hour.

What led me hither, al can say,
Who, knowing God, his will obey

Thy slumbers now cannot be long:
Thy little dreams become too strong
For sleep-too like realities:
Soon shall I see those hidden eyes!
Thou wakest, and, starting from the ground,
In dear amazement look'st around;
Like one who, little given to roam,
Wonders to find herself from home!
But when a stranger meets thy view,
Glistens thine eye with wilder hue:
A moment's thought who I may be,
Blends with thy smiles of courtesy.

Fair was that face as break of dawn,
When o'er its beauty sleep was drawn,
Like a thin veil that half-conceal'd
The light of soul, and half-reveal'd.
While thy hush'd heart with visions wrought,
Each trembling eye-lash moved with thought,
And things we dream, but ne'er can speak,
Like clouds came floating over thy cheek,
Such summer-clouds as travel light,
When the soul's heaven lies calm and bright;
Till thou awokest,-then to thine cyc
Thy whole heart leapt in ecstacy!

And lovely is that heart of thine,
Or sure these eyes could never shine
With such a wild, yet bashful glee,
Gay, half-o'ercome timidity!
Nature has breathed into thy face
A spirit of unconscious grace;
A spirit that lies never still,
And makes thee joyous 'gainst thy will.
As, sometimes o'er a sleeping lake
Soft airs a gentle rippling make,
Till, ere we know, the strangers fly,
And water blends again with sky.

O happy sprite! didst thou but know
What pleasures through my being flow
From thy soft eyes, a holier feeling
From their blue light could ne'er be stealing,
But thou wouldst be more loath to part
And give me more of that glad heart!
Oh! gone thou art! and bearest hence
The glory of thy innocence.

But with deep joy I breathe the air
That kiss'd thy cheek, and fann'd thy hair;
And feel though fate our lives must sever,
Yet shall thy image live for ever!