LA MENT

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS,

ON THE

APPROACH OF SPRING.

Now Nature hangs her mantle green

On every blooming tree
And spreads her sheets o' daisies white

Out o'er the graffy lea:
Now Phoebus chears the crystal streams,

And glads the azure skies;
But nought can glad the weary wight

That fast in durance lies.

Now laverocks wake the merry morn,

Aloft on dewy wing;
The merle, in his noontide bower,

Makes woodland echoes ring;
The Mavis wild wi' many a note,

Sings drowfy day to rest :
In love and freedom they rejoice,

Wi' care nor thrall oppreft.

Now blooms the lily by the bank,

The primrose down the brac ;
The hawthorns budding in the glen,

And milk-white is the fae :
The meaneft hind in fair Scotland

May rove their sweets amang ; Bat I, the Queen of a' Scotland,

Maun lie in prison ftrang.

I was the Queen o'bonie France,

Where happy I has been; Fu' lightly rase I on the morn,

As blythe lay. down at e'en : And I'm the sovereign of Scotland,

And mony a traitor there; Yet here I lie in foreign bands,

And never ending care.

But as for thee, thou false woman,

My fifter and my fae,
Grim vengeance, yet, shall whet a sword

That thro' thy soul shall gae :
The weeping blood in woman's breast

Was never known to thee ;
Nor th' balm that draps on wounds of woe

Frae woman's pitying e'e.

My fon! my fon! may kinder stars

Upon thy fortune fine !
And may those pkasures gild thy reign,

That ne'er wad blink on mine!
God keep thee frae thy mother's facs,

Or turn their hearts to thee:
And where thou meet'it thy mother's friend,

Remember him for me!

O i foon, to me, may summer funs

Nac mair light up the morn!
Nae mair, to me, the autumn winds

Wave' o'er the yellow corn!
And in the narrow houfe o death

Let winter round me rave ; And the next flowers, that deck the spring,

Bloom on my peaceful grave.

LATE crippled of an arm, and now a leg,

a , About to beg a pass for leave to beg ; Dull, listless, teased, dejected, and deprest, (Nature is adverse to a criple's reft); Will generous G***** list to his Poet's wail? (It soothes poor Misery, hearkening to her tale), And hear him eurfe the light he first surveyed, And doubly curse the luckless rhyming trade.

Thou, Nature, partial Nature, I arraign ; Of thy caprice maternal I complain. The lion and the bull thy care have found, One shakes the forest, and one spurns the ground: Thou giv'it the ass his hide, the snail his shell, Th’envenomed wasp, victorious, guards his cell. -Thy minions, kings defend, controul, devour, In all th' omnipotence of rule and power. Foxes and statesmen, fubtile wiles enfure; The cit and polecat stink, and are secure. Toads with their poison, doctors with their drug, 'The priest and hedgehog in their robes are snug. Even filly woman has her warlike arts, Her tongue and eyes, her dreaded spear and darts.

But Oh! thou bitter step-mother and hard,
To thy poor fenceless, naked child-the bard !
A thing unteachable in world's skill,
And half an idiot too, more helpless still,
No heels to bear him from the opening dun ;
No claws to dig, his hated fight to shun;
No horns, but thofe by luckless Hymen'worn,
And those, alas ! not Amalthea's horn :
No nerves olfact'ry, Mammon's trusty cur,
Clad in rich Dulness' comfortable fur,
In naked feeling, and in aching pride,
He bears the unbroken blaft from

every Vampyre booksellers drain him to the heart, And scorpion Critics cureless venom dart.

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