THREE SONNETS.

THE MOTION OF THE MISTS.

HERE by the sunless lake there is no air,

Yet with how ceaseless motion, with how strange Flowing and fading, do the high mists range The gloomy gorges of the mountains bare. Some weary breathing never ceases there,—

The ashen peaks can feel it hour by hour; The purple depths are darkened by its power; A soundless breath, a trouble all things share That feel it come and go. See! onward swim

The ghostly mists, from silent land to land, From gulf to gulf; now the whole air grows dimLike living men, darkling a space, they stand. But lo! a Sunbeam, like the Cherubim, Scatters them onward with a flaming brand.

CORUISK.

I think this is the very stillest place

On all God's earth, and yet no rest is here. The vapours mirrored in the black loch's face Drift on like frantic shapes and disappear; A never-ceasing murmur in mine ear Tells me of waters wild that flow and flow. There is no rest at all, afar or near, Only a sense of things that moan and go. And lo! the still small life these limbs contain I feel flows on like those, restless and proud;

Before that breathing nought within my brain
Pauses, but all drifts on like mist and cloud;
Only the bald peaks and the stones remain,
Frozen before Thee, desolate and bowed.

BUT WHITHER?

And whither, O ye vapours! do ye wend?
Stirred by that weary breathing, whither away?
And whither, O ye dreams! that night and day
Drift o'er the troublous life, tremble, and blend
To broken lineaments of that far Friend,

Whose strange breath's come and go ye feel so deep?
O Soul! that hast no rest and seekest sleep,
Whither? and will thy wanderings ever end?
All things that be are full of a quick pain;

Onward we fleet, swift as the running rill,The vapours drift, the mists within the brain Float on obscuringly and have no will. Only the bare peaks and the stones remain, These only, and a God sublime and still.

ROBERT BUCHANAN.

IN THE SHADOWS.

DIE down, O dismal day! and let me live;

And come, blue deeps! magnificently strewn With coloured clouds-large, light, and fugitiveBy upper winds through pompous motions blown. Now it is death in life-a vapour dense

Creeps round my window till I cannot see

The far snow-shining mountains and the glens

Shagging the mountain tops. O God! make free This barren, shackled earth, so deadly cold. Breathe gently forth thy Spring, till Winter flies In rude amazement, fearful and yet bold, While she performs her customed charities.

I weigh the loaded hours till life is bare

O God! for one clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet air!

DAVID GRAY.

THE LUGGIE.

OH, sweet and still around the hill

Thy silver waters, Brook, are creeping;

Beneath the hill as sweet and still

Thy weary friend lies sleeping:

A laurel leaf is in his hair,

His eyes are closed to human seeming,
And surely he hath dreams most fair,
If he, indeed, be dreaming.

O Brook! he smiled, a happy child,
Upon thy banks, and loved thy crying,
And, as time flew, thy murmur grew
A trouble purifying;

Till, last, thy laurel leaf he took,

Dream-eyed and tearful, like a woman,
And turned thy haunting cry, O Brook!"
To speech divine and human.

O Brook! in song full sweet and strong
He sang of thee he loved so dearly;
Then softly creep around his sleep,
And murmur to him cheerly;

For though he knows nor fret nor fear,

Though life no more slips strangely through him, Yet he may sleep more sound, to hear

His friend so close unto him.

And when at last the sleepers cast

Their swathes aside, and, wondering, waken,

Let thy friend be full tenderlie

In silvern arms uptaken.

Him be it then thy task to bear

Up to the Footstool, softly flowing,

Smiles on his eyes, and in his hair

Thy leaf of laurel blowing!

ROBERT BUCHANAN.

DECLENSION AND REVIVAL.

'From Me is thy fruit found.'

DIE to thy root, sweet flower!

If so God wills, die even to thy root;

Live there awhile an uncomplaining, mute,

Blank life, with darkness wrapped about thy head,
And fear not for the silence round thee spread.

This is no grave, though thou among the dead
Art counted, but the Hiding-place of Power.
Die to thy root, sweet flower!

Spring from thy root, sweet flower!

When so God wills, spring even from thy root;

Send through the earth's warm breast a quickened shoot;
Spread to the sunshine, spread unto the shower,
And lift into the sunny air thy dower

Of bloom and odour. Life is on the plains,
And, in the woods, a sound of buds and rains
That sing together. Lo! the winter's cold
Is past, sweet scents revive, thick buds unfold;
Be thou, too, willing in the Day of Power:
Spring from thy root, sweet flower!

DORA GREENWELL.

FEBRUARY IST, 1842.

NE month is past, another is begun,

ONE

Since merry bells rang out the dying year,

And buds of rarest green began to peer,

As if impatient for a warmer sun;

And, though the distant hills are bleak and dun,
The virgin snowdrop, like a lambent fire,

Pierces the cold earth, with its green-streaked spire;
And, in dark woods, the wandering little one
May find a primrose. Thus the better mind
Puts forth some flowers, escaped from Paradise,
Though faith be dim as faintest wintry skies,
And passion fierce as January wind.
O God, vouchsafe a sunbeam clear and kind,
To cheer the pining flow'ret ere it dies.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE.