A Paraphrase on the Latter Part of the Sixth Chapter of St. Matthew.
WHEN my breast labours with oppressive care,
And o'er my cheek descends the falling tear;
While all my warring passions are at strife,
Oh, let me listen to the words of life!
Raptures deep-felt his doctrine did impart,
And thus he raised from earth the drooping heart:
Think not, when all your scanty stores afford
Is spread at once upon the sparing board;
Think not, when worn the homely robe appears,
While, on the roof, the howling tempest bears;
What farther shall this feeble life sustain,
And what shall clothe these shivering limbs again.
Say, does not life its nourishment exceed?
And the fair body its investing weed?
Behold! and look away your low despair-
See the light tenants of the barren air:
To them, nor stores, nor granaries, belong,
Nought but the woodland, and the pleasing song;
Yet, your kind heavenly Father bends his eye
On the least wing, that flits along the sky.
To him they sing when Spring renews the plain,
To him they cry in Winter's pinching reign;
Nor is their music nor their plaint in vain :
He hears the gay, and the distressful call,
And with unsparing bounty fills them all.
Observe the rising lily's snowy grace,
Observe the various vegetable race:
They neither toil, nor spin, but careless grow,
Yet see how warm they blush! how bright they glow!
What regal vestments can with them compare!
What king so shining! or what queen so fair:
If, ceaseless, thus the fowls of heaven he feeds;
If o'er the fields such lucid robes he spreads;
Will he not care for you, ye faithless, say?
Is he unwise? or, are ye less than they?
The Traveller Lost in the Snow
As thus the snows arise; and foul and fierce,
All Winter drives along the darken'd air;
In his own loose-revolving fields, the swain
Disaster'd stands: sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes,
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain;
Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray;
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth
In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul!
What black despair, what horror, fills his heart!
When for the dusky spot, which fancy feign'd
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and blest abode of man ;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest, howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind,
Of covered pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of frost;
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,
Smooth'd up with snow; and, what is land, unknown,
What water of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loose marsh or solitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.
These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mix'd with the tender anguish nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends, unseen.
In vain for him th' officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm ;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife, nor children. more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense;
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows, a stiffen'd corse,
Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
The Miseries of Indolences
"Ye impious wretches," quoth the knight in wrath
"Your happiness behold!"-Then straight a wand
He waved, an anti-magic power that hath
Truth from illusive falsehood to command.
Sudden the landskip sinks on every hand;
The pure quick streams are marshy puddles found;
On baleful heaths the groves all blacken'd stand;
And, o'er the weedy foul abhorred ground,
Snakes, adders, toads, each loathsome creature, crawls around.
And here and there, on trees by lightning scathed,
Unhappy wights who loathed life yhung;
Or, in fresh gore and recent murder bathed,
They weltering lay; or else, infuriate flung
Into the gloomy flood, while ravens sung
The funeral dirge, they down the torrent roll'd :
These, by distemper'd blood to madness stung,
Had doom'd themselves; whence oft, when night controll'd
The world, returning hither their sad spirits howl'd.
Meantime a moving scene was open laid;
That lazar-house, I whilom in my lay,
Depainted have, its horrors deep display'd,
And gave unnumber'd wretches to the day,
Who tossing there in squalid misery lay.
Soon as of sacred light th' unwonted smile
Pour'd on these living catacombs its ray,
Though the drear caverns stretching many a mile,
The sick up-raised their heads and dropp'd their woes awhile.
"O, heaven! (they cried) and do we once more see
Yon blessed sun, and this green earth so fair?
Are we from noisome damps of pest-house free?
And drink our souls the sweet ethereal air?
O, thou! or knight, or god! who holdest there
That fiend, oh, keep him in eternal chains!
But what for us, the children of despair,
Brought to the brink of hell, what hope remains?
Repentance does itself but aggravate our pains."
BY CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D.
THIS bard was born at Kirkwall, in the parish of Burness, Orkney, in 1790. At an early age he was deprived by death of both parents, and at the age of twelve he shipped on board a small coasting vessel as cabin boy. He made rapid progress in this occupation, and when still a mere youth was successful in obtaining the command of a trading ship in which he made several voyages. In 1815 he was appointed a first officer on an armed cruiser in the British Revenue, and at the age of thirty was promoted to the position of tradesurveyor of customs, successively discharging the duties of the office at the ports of Dundee, Kirkcaldy, Montrose, and Leith. In 1852 he was placed on the retired list, when he took up his residence in Edinburgh, at which city he died, February 11th, 1854. Vedder, from his boyhood had been a writer of verse, but his first work did not appear until 1826, when he issued "The Covenanter's Communion, and other Poems." This was followed in 1832 by "Orcadian Sketches," and in 1839 he edited an edition of the "Poetical Remains of Robert Fraser." In 1841 he issued "Poems, Legendary, Lyrical, and Descriptive." He also produced a “Life of Sir Walter Scott," and conjointly with his son-in-law, Frederick Schenck, a lithographer, a volume entitled "Lays and Lithographs." His last work was a new English version of the old German story "Reynard the Fox."
Song of the Scottish Exile.
OH! the sunny peaches glow,
And the grapes in clusters blush;
And the cooling silver streams
From their sylvan fountains rush;
There is music in the grove,
And there's fragrance on the gale;
And there's nought so dear to me
As my own Highland vale.
Oh! the queen-like virgin rose,
Of the dew and sunlight born,
And the azure violet,
Spread their beauties to the morn ; So does the hyacinth,
And the lily pure and pale;
But I love the daisy best
In my own Highland vale.
Hark! hark! those thrilling notes! 'Tis the nighingale complains;
Oh! the soul of music breathes
In those more than plaintive strains; But they're not so dear to me
As the murmur of the rill,
And the bleating of the lambs
On my own Highland hill.
Oh! the flow'rets fair may glow,
And the juicy fruits may blush,
And the beauteous birds may sing,
And the crystal streamlets rush;
And the verdant meads may smile,
And the cloudless sun may beam,
But there's nought beneath the skies
Like my own Highland home.
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