WRITTEN ON PASSING DEADMAN'S ISLAND,*

IN THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,

Late in the evening, September 1804.

SEE you, beneath yon cloud so dark,
Fast gliding along, a gloomy Bark?
Her sails are full, though the wind is still,

And there blows not a breath her sails to fill!

Oh! what doth that vessel of darkness bear?
The silent calm of the grave is there,
Save now and again a death-knell rung,
And the flap of the sails, with night-fog hung!

There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador;

Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,
Full many a mariner's bones are tost!

Yon shadowy Bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim blue fire that lights her deck
Doth play on as pale and livid a crew,
As ever yet drank the churchyard dew!

To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast,
To Deadman's Isle, she speeds her fast;
By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,
And the hand that steers is not of this world!

Oh! hurry thee on-oh! hurry thee on,
Thou terrible Bark! ere the night be gone,
Nor the morning look on so foul a sight
As would blanch for ever her rosy light!

TO THE BOSTON FRIGATE,

ON LEAVING HALIFAX FOR ENGLAND,
October 1804.

Νοστου προφασις γλυκερου.

Pindar. Pyth. 4.

WITH triumph this morning, O Boston! I hail
The stir of thy deck and the spread of thy sail,
For they tell me I soon shall be wafted, in thee,
To the flourishing isle of the brave and the free,

This is one of the Magdalen Islands, and, singularly enough, is the property of Sir Isaac Coffin. The above lines were suggested by a superstition very common among sailors, who call this ghost-ship, I think, "the Flying Dutch

man.

"

We were thirteen days on our passage from Quebec to Halifax, and I had been so spoiled by the very splendid hospitality with which my friends of the Phaeton and Boston had treated me that I was but ill-prepared to encounter the miseries of a Canadian ship. The weather, however, was pleasant, and the scenery along the river delightful. Our passage through the Gut of Canso, with a bright sky and a fair wind, was particularly striking and romantic.

And that chill Nova-Scotia's unpromising strand
Is the last I shall tread of American land.

Well-peace to the land! may the people, at length,
Know that freedom is bliss, but that honour is strength;
That though man have the wings of the fetterless wind,
Of the wantonest air that the north can unbind,
Yet if health do not sweeten the blast with her bloom,
Nor virtue's aroma its pathway perfume,

Unblest is the freedom and dreary the flight,
That but wanders to ruin and wantons to blight!

Farewell to the few I have left with regret.
May they sometimes recall, what I cannot forget,
That communion of heart and that parley of soul

Which has lengthened our nights and illumined our bowl,

When they've asked me the manners, the mind, or the mien,
Of some bard I had known or some chief I had seen,
Whose glory, though distant, they long had adored,
Whose name often hallowed the juice of their board!
And still as, with sympathy humble but true,

I told them each luminous trait that I knew,

They have listened and sighed that the powerful stream
Of America's empire should pass like a dream,
Without leaving one fragment of genius, to say
How sublime was the tide which had vanished away!
Farewell to the few-though we never may meet
On this planet again, it is soothing and sweet
To think that, whenever my song or my name
Shall recur to their ear, they'll recall me the same
I have been to them now, young, unthoughtful and blest,
Ere hope had deceived me or sorrow depressed!

But, Douglas! while thus I endear to my mind
The elect of the land we shall soon leave behind,
I can read in the weather-wise glance of thine eye,
As it follows the rack flitting over the sky,
That the faint coming breeze will be fair for our flight,
And shall steal us away, ere the falling of night.
Dear Douglas! thou knowest, with thee by my side,
With thy friendship to soothe me, thy courage to guide,
There is not a bleak isle in those summerless seas,
Where the day comes in darkness, or shines but to freeze,
Not a track of the line, not a barbarous shore,

That I could not with patience, with pleasure explore!
Oh! think then how happy I follow thee now,

When hope smooths the billowy path of our prow,

And each prosperous sigh of the west-springing wind

Takes me nearer the home, where my heart is enshrined; Where the smile of a father shall meet me again,

And the tears of a mother turn bliss into pain!

Where the kind voice of sisters shall steal to my heart,

And ask it, in sighs, how we ever could part !—

But see

the bent topsails are ready to swell— To the boat-I am with thee-Columbia, farewell!

TO LADY H

ON AN OLD RING FOUND AT TUNBRIDGE-WELLS.

Tunbridge-Wells, August 1805.

WHEN Grammont graced these happy springs,

And Tunbridge saw, upon her pantiles,

The merriest wight of all the kings

That ever ruled these gay gallant isles;

Like us, by day, they rode, they walked,
At eve they did as we may do,
And Grammont just like Spencer talked,
And lovely Stewart smiled like you!

The only different trait is this,

That woman then, if man beset her, Was rather given to saying "yes," Because as yet she knew no better !

Each night they held a coterie,

Where every fear to slumber charmed, Lovers were all they ought to be,

And husbands not the least alarmed!

They called up all their school-day pranks,
Nor thought it much their sense beneath
To play at riddles, quips, and cranks,

And lords showed wit, and ladies teeth.

As-"Why are husbands like the Mint?"
Because, forsooth, a husband's duty
Is just to set the name and print

That give a currency to beauty.

"Why is a garden's wildered maze

Like a young widow, fresh and fair?"

Because it wants some hand to raise

The weeds which "have no business there!"

And thus they missed, and thus they hit,

And now they struck, and now they parried,

And some lay in of full-grown wit,

While others of a pun miscarried.

'Twas one of those facetious nights
That Grammont gave this forfeit ring
For breaking grave conundrum rites,
Or punning ill, or- some such thing.

From whence it can be fairly traced

Through many a branch and many a bough, From twig to twig, until it graced

The snowy hand that wears it now.

All this I'll prove, and then-to you,
O Tunbridge! and your springs ironical,
I swear by Heathcote's eye of blue,

To dedicate th' important chronicle.

Long may your ancient inmates give
Their mantles to your modern lodgers,
And Charles's love in Heathcote live,
And Charles's bards revive in Rogers!

Let no pedantic fools be there,

For ever be those fops abolished,

With heads as wooden as thy ware,

And, Heaven knows! not half so polished.

But still receive the mild, the gay,
The few who know the rare delight

Of reading Grammont every day,
And acting Grammont every night!

ΤΟ

NEVER mind how the pedagogue proses,
You want not antiquity's stamp,

The lip that's so scented by roses
Oh! never must smell of the lamp.

Old Chloe, whose withering kisses
Have long set the loves at defiance,
Now, done with the science of blisses,
May fly to the blisses of science !

Young Sappho, for want of employments,
Alone o'er her Ovid may melt,
Condemned but to read of enjoyments
Which wiser Corinna had felt.

But for you to be buried in books—
O Fanny! they're pitiful sages
Who could not in one of your looks
Read more than in millions of pages!

Astronomy finds in your eye

Better light than she studies above, And Music must borrow your sigh

As the melody dearest to love.

In Ethics-'tis you that can check,

In a minute, their doubts and their quarrels ; Oh! show but that mole on your neck,

And 'twill soon put an end to their morals.

Your Arithmetic only can trip

When to kiss and to count you endeavour; But Eloquence glows on your lip

When you swear that you'll love me for ever.

Thus you see what a brilliant alliance
Of arts is assembled in you-

A course of more exquisite science
Man never need wish to go through!

And oh! if a fellow like me

May confer a diploma of hearts, With my lip thus I seal your degree, My divine little Mistress of Arts!

SONG.

SWEETEST love! I'll not forget thee,
Time shall only teach my heart
Fonder, warmer, to regret thee,
Lovely, gentle as thou art !
Farewell, Bessy!

Yet, oh! yet again we'll meet, love,
And repose our hearts at last :
Oh! sure 'twill then be sweet, love,
Calm to think on sorrows past.
Farewell, Bessy!

Still I feel my heart is breaking,
When I think I stray from thee,
Round the world that quiet seeking
Which I fear is not for me!
Farewell, Bessy!

Calm to peace thy lover's bosom—
Can it, dearest ! must it be?
Thou within an hour shalt lose him,
He for ever loses thee!

Farewell, Bessy!

DID NOT.

'TWAS a new feeling-something more
Than we had dared to own before,