And then our ghosts, whilst raves the madden'd storm, Will sweep at midnight o'er the wilder'd wave; YES! all is past-swift time has fled Wilt thou our lowly beds with tears of I sought the cold brink of the midnight surge, I sigh'd beneath its wave to hide my woes, The rising tempest sung a funeral dirge, pity lave?" sigh. It is the Benshie's moan on the storm, Or a shivering fiend that thirsting for sin, Seeks murder and guilt when virtue sleeps, Wilder did grief athwart my bosom Wing'd with the power of some ruthless glare; king, Still'd was the unearthly howling, and And sweeps o'er the breast of the prostrate plain. a strain, It was not a fiend from the regions of Still secure 'mid the wildest war of the hell sky, That poured its low moan on the still- The phantom courser scours the waste, And his rider howls in the thunder's ness of night : It is not the shade of a murdered More distinct than the thunder's wildest Who has rushed uncalled to the throne Then does the dragon, who chain'd in the caverns of his God, And howls in the pause of the eddying To eternity, curses the champion of This voice is low, cold, hollow, and Moan and yell loud at the lone hour of chill, midnight, 'Tis not heard by the ear, but is felt in And twine his vast wreaths round the forms of the demons; the soul. 'Tis more frightful far than the death- Then in agony roll his death-swimming demon's scream, eyeballs, Or the laughter of fiends when they Though wilder'd by death, yet never to Of a man who has sold his soul to Then he shakes from his skeleton folds Yet when the fierce swell of the tempest On the blast that sweeps the breast of the lake, And the whirlwinds howl in the caves And mingles its swell with the moon is raving, MELODY TO A SCENE OF FORMER TIMES ART thou indeed for ever gone, This panting breast, this frenzied Might wake my tear. And thine must ever, ever be." But oh! awak'ning still anew, Athwart my enanguish'd senses flew A fiercer, deadlier agony! [End of Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson.] STANZA FROM A TRANSLA TREMBLE Kings despised of man! -'s slumb'ring Tremble! Your parricidal plan Oh! heaven is witness I did love, That shades the intervening dale. Again you say, "Confide in me, Though the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants approaches, Thirsting-ay, thirsting for blood; And demands, like mankind, his brother for food; ON AN ICICLE THAT CLUNG TO THE GRASS OF A GRAVE I Yet more lenient, more gentle OH! take the pure gem to where Waves too pure, too celestial, for For I found the pure gem, when the its stream, What remains, but to curse him,-to Seeks Heaven to mix with its own curse him and die? kindred there? WHY is it said thou canst not live Canst bloom for ever there? Though bathed with his poison dew, Still thou retain'st unchanging bloom, Fix'd tranquil, even in the tomb. And oh! when on the blest reviving The day-star dawns of love, Each energy of soul surviving More vivid, soars above, |