AT nightfall, walking on the cliff-crown'd shore,
Where sea and sky were in each other lost;
Dark ships were scudding through the wild uproar,
Whose wrecks ere morn must strew the dreary coast;
I mark'd one well-moor'd vessel tempest-tost,
Sails reef'd, helm lash'd, a dreadful siege she bore,
Her deck by billow after billow cross'd,

While every moment she might be no more:
Yet firmly anchor'd on the nether sand,

Like a chain'd Lion ramping at his foes,

Forward and rearward still she plunged and rose, Till broke her cable; - then she fled to land,

With all the waves in chace; throes following throes;

She'scaped, she struck,-she stood upon the strand.

11.

The morn was beautiful, the storm gone by;
Three days had pass'd; I saw the peaceful main,
One molten mirror, one illumined plane,

Clear as the blue, sublime, o'erarching sky:
On shore that lonely vessel caught mine eye,
Her bow was sea-ward, all equipt her train,
Yet to the sun she spread her wings in vain,
Like a chain'd Eagle, impotent to fly ;

There fix'd as if for ever to abide;

Far down the beach had roll'd the low neap-tide,
Whose mingling murmur faintly lull'd the ear :
"Is this," methought, "is this the doom of pride,
Check'd in the onset of thy brave career,

Ingloriously to rot by piece-meal here ?"

III.

Spring-tides return'd, and Fortune smiled; the bay
Received the rushing ocean to its breast;

While waves on waves, innumerably prest,
Seem'd, with the prancing of their proud array,
Sea-horses, flash'd with foam, and snorting spray;
Their power and thunder broke that vessel's rest;
Slowly, with new expanding life possest,

To her own element she glid away;

Buoyant and bounding like the polar Whale,
That takes his pastime; every joyful sail
Was to the freedom of the wind unfurl'd,
While right and left the parted surges curl'd:

Go, gallant Bark, with such a tide and gale,
I'll pledge thee to a voyage round the world.

ROBERT BURNS.

WHAT bird in beauty, flight, or song,

Can with the Bard compare,

Who sang as sweet, and soar'd as strong,

As ever child of air?

His plume, his note, his form, could BURNS,

For whim or pleasure, change;

He was not one, but all by turns,

With transmigration strange.

The Blackbird, oracle of spring,

When flow'd his moral lay;

The Swallow wheeling on the wing,

Capriciously at play :

The Humming-Bird, from bloom to bloom,

Inhaling heavenly balm;

The Raven, in the tempest's gloom;

The Halcyon, in the calm:

In "auld Kirk Alloway," the Owl,

At witching time of night;

By "bonnie Doon," the earliest Fowl

That caroll'd to the light.

He was the Wren amidst the grove,

When in this homely vein;

At Bannockburn the Bird of Jove,

With thunder in his train:

The Woodlark, in his mournful hours;

The Goldfinch, in his mirth;

The Thrush, a spendthrift of his powers,

Enrapturing heaven and earth: