THE SWAN OF LOCH OICH.
A solitary wild swan may be seen on Loch Oich. It has sailed there for twenty or thirty years, in summer and winter. It had a mate, but about twenty years ago the master of a trading vessel (more wantonly barbarous than the Duke of Cumberland when he burned the old castle of Inverrgarry,) shot the bird. The Glengary swan, however, kept its solitary range. Last winter three other swans lighted on the lake; they remained a month or two, and it was thought the recluse would depart with them, but it had apparently no desire to change its wonted station. As swans have been known to live upwards of a century, we hope this faithful bird will escape accident and cruelty, and live through two or three generations more, to grace the shores of Loch Oich.
Inverness Courier.
| Beautiful bird of the Scottish lake, With plumage pure as the light snow-flake, With neck of pride and a wing of grace, And lofty air as of royal race— Beautiful bird, may you long abide And grace Loch Oich in your lonely pride. Bright was the breast of the “loch,” I ween, Its crystal wave and its sapphire sheen; And bright its border of shrub and tree, And thistle-bloom in its fragrancy— When to thy side thy fair mate prest, Or skimm'd the lake with her tintless breast. But she is not! and still, to thee, Are the sunny wave and the shadowing tree, The mossy brink and the thistle flower, Dear, as to thee in that blessed hour! What is the spell o'er thy pinion thrown That binds thee here, fair bird, alone? Does the vision bright of thy peerless bride Still skim the lake and press thy side? And haunt the nook in the fir-tree's shade? And press the moss in the sunny glade? And has earth nothing, to thee, so fair, As the gentle spirit that lingers there? Oh, 'tis a wondrous, wizard spell! The human bosom its force can tell; The heart forsaken hath felt, like thine, The mystic web with its fibres twine, Constraining still in the scenes to stay, Where all it treasured had passed away. Bird of Loch Oich, 'tis well! 'tis well! You yield your wing to the viewless spell; Oh, who would seek, with a stranger eye, For blooming shores and a brilliant sky And range the earth for the hopeless art, To find a home for a broken heart? Oh, I would linger, though all alone, Where hallowed love its light has thrown, And hearth and streamlet and tree and flower, Are link'd in thought with a blessed hour; Home of my heart, those scenes should be As thy own Loch Oich, fair bird to thee. |
ELIZA.
Maine.
OTTO VENIUS.
Otto Venius, the designer of “Le Theatre moral de la Vie Humaine,” illustrates Horace's “Raro antecedentem scelestum deseruit pede pœna claudo,” by sketching Punishment with a wooden leg.