An' oh! to list her ev'ning sang,
When a' alane she gently strays
The yellow waving broom amang,
That blooms on Manor's flow'ry braes—
Her voice sae saft, sae sweet and clear,
Afar in yonder bower sae green,
The mavis quits her lay to hear
A bonnier sang frae lovely Jean.
But it 's no her peerless face nor form,
It 's no her voice sae sweet and clear,
That keeps my love to her sae warm,
An' maks her every day mair dear;
It 's just the beauties o' her mind,
Her easy, winning, modest mien,
Her truth and constancy, which bind
My heart and soul to lovely Jean.
JOHN MALCOLM.
John Malcolm was the second son of the Rev. John Malcolm, minister of the parish of Firth and Stennis, Orkney, where he was born about 1795. Through a personal application to the Duke of Kent, he was enabled to proceed as a volunteer to join the army in Spain. Arriving at the period when the army under General Graham (afterwards Lord Lynedoch) was besieging St Sebastian, he speedily obtained a lieutenancy in the 42d Regiment, in which he served to the close of the Pyrenees' campaign. Wounded at the battle of Toulouse, by a musket-ball penetrating his right shoulder, and otherwise debilitated, he retired from active service on half-pay, and with a pension for his wound. He now fixed his abode in Edinburgh, and devoted himself to literary pursuits. He contributed to Constable's Magazine, and other periodicals. For one of the earlier volumes of "Constable's Miscellany," he wrote a narrative of the Peninsular War. As a poet, he became known by some stanzas on the death of Lord Byron, which appeared in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal. In 1828, he published "Scenes of War, and other Poems;" and subsequently contributed numerous poetical pieces to the pages of the Edinburgh Literary Journal. A small volume of prose sketches also appeared from his pen, under the title of "Tales of Field and Flood." In 1831 he undertook the editorship of the Edinburgh Observer newspaper, which he held till the period of his death. He died at Edinburgh, of a pulmonary complaint, in September 1835.
Fond of conversation, and abounding in humorous anecdote, Malcolm was especially esteemed for his gentle and amiable deportment. His poetry, which is often vigorous, is uniformly characterised by sweetness of versification.
THE MUSIC OF THE NIGHT.
The music of the night,
Upon its lonely flight
Into the west, where sink its ebbing sands;
That muffled music seems
Like voices heard in dreams,
Sigh'd back from long-lost years and distant lands.
Amid the stillness round,
As 'twere the shade of sound,
Floats on the low sweet strain of lulling tones;
Such as from trembling wire
Of sweet Æolian lyre,
With winds awake in murmurs and in moans.