BY MRS COCKBURN.
1 I've seen the smiling
Of Fortune beguiling;
I've felt all its favours, and found its decay:
Sweet was its blessing,
Kind its caressing;
But now 'tis fled—fled far away.
2 I've seen the forest
Adorned the foremost
With flowers of the fairest most pleasant and gay;
Sae bonnie was their blooming!
Their scent the air perfuming!
But now they are withered and weeded away.
3 I've seen the morning
With gold the hills adorning,
And loud tempest storming before the mid-day.
I've seen Tweed's silver streams,
Shining in the sunny beams,
Grow drumly and dark as he rowed on his way.
4 Oh, fickle Fortune,
Why this cruel sporting?
Oh, why still perplex us, poor sons of a day?
Nae mair your smiles can cheer me,
Nae mair your frowns can fear me;
For the Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away.
SIR WILLIAM JONES.
This extraordinary person, the 'Justinian of India,' the master of twenty-eight languages, who into the short space of forty-eight years (he was born in 1746, and died 27th of April 1794) compressed such a vast quantity of study and labour, is also the author of two volumes of poetry, of unequal merit. We quote the best thing in the book.
A PERSIAN SONG OF HAFIZ.
1 Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight,
And bid these arms thy neck enfold;
That rosy cheek, that lily hand,
Would give thy poet more delight
Than all Bokhara's vaunted gold,
Than all the gems of Samarcand.
2 Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow,
And bid thy pensive heart be glad,
Whate'er the frowning zealots say:
Tell them, their Eden cannot show
A stream so clear as Rocnabad,
A bower so sweet as Mosellay.