To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow: a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
LOCHIEL. Lochiel's Warning.
Lochiel! Lochiel! beware of the day
When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array!
For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight:
They rally, they bleed, for the kingdom and crown;
Wo, wo, to the riders that trample them down!
Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,
And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain.
But hark! through the fast flashing lightning of war,
What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?
'Tis thine, O Glenullin! whose bride shall await,
Like a love-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate.
A steed comes at morning: no rider is there;
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.
Weep, Albin! to death and captivity led!
Oh weep! but thy tears cannot number the dead
For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave,
Culloden! that reeks with the blood of the brave
-Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day!
For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,
But man cannot cover what God would reveal:
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before.
Gleaming with the setting sun,
One burnish'd sheet of living gold,
Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled
In all her length far winding lay,
With promontory, creek, and bay,
And islands that, empurpled bright,
Floated amid the livelier light;
And mountains, that like giant's stand,
To centinel enchanted land.
High on the south, huge Benvenue
Down to the lake in masses threw
Crags, knolls and mounds, confusedly hurl'd
The fragments of an earlier world;
A wildering forest feathered o'er
His ruined sides and summit hoar,
While on the north, through middle air,
Benean heav'd high his forehead bare.
The summer dawn's reflected hue
To purple changed Loch Katrine blue;
Mildly and soft the western breeze
Just kiss'd the lake, just stirred the trees,
And the pleased lake, like maiden coy,
Trembled but dimpled not for joy;
The mountain shadows on her breast
Were neither broken nor at rest;
In bright uncertainty they lie,
Like future joys to Fancy's eye.
The water lily to the light
Her chalice rear'd of silver bright;
The doe awoke, and to the lawn,
Begemmed with dew-drops, led her fawn;
The gray mist left the mountain side,
The torrent showed its glistening pride;
Invisible in flecked sky,
The lark sent down her revelry;
The black-bird and the speckled thrush
Good-morrow gave from brake and bush ;
In answer cooed the cushat dove;
Her notes of peace, and rest, and love.
LOGIC. Hudibras, his Logic.
He was in logic a great critic,
Profoundly skill'd in analytic;
He could distinguish and divide
A hair 'twixt south and south-west side;
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute:
He'd undertake to prove, by force
Of argument a man's no horse
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a lord may be an owl;
A calf an alderman, a goose a justice,
And rooks committee-men and trustees.
He'd run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination
All this by syllogism true,
In mood and figure he would do.
LONDON. Motives for going to.
Ambition, av'rice, penury incurr'd
By endless riot, vanity, the lust
Of pleasure and variety, despatch,
As duly as the swallows, disappear
The world of wand'ring knights and squires to town.
London ingulfs them all! The shark is there,
And the shark's prey, the spendthrift, and the leech
That sucks him: there the sycophant, and he
Who, with bareheaded and obsequious bows,
Begs a warm office, doom'd to a cold jail
And grot per diem, if his patron frown.
The levee swarms, as if in golden pomp
Were character'd on every statesman's door,
'Batter'd and bankrupt fortunes mended here.'
These are the charms that sully and eclipse
The charms of nature. 'Tis the cruel gripe,
That lean, hard-handed poverty inflicts,
The hope of better things, the chance to win
The wish to shine, the thirst to be amus'd,
That at the sound of winter's hoary wing
Unpeopled all our counties of such herds
Of flutt'ring, loit'ring, cringing, begging, loose,
And wanton vagrants, as make London, vast
And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek, she pin'd in thought;
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like patience on a monument,
Till Hymen brought his love-delighted hour,
There dwelt no joy in Eden's rosy bower!
In vain the viewless seraph lingering there,
At starry midnight charm'd the silent air;
In vain, to sooth the solitary shade
Aerial notes in mingling measure play'd;
The summer wind that shook the spangled tree,
The whispering wave, the murmur of the bee :-
Still slowly pass'd the melancholy day,
And still the stranger wist not where to stray.
The world was sad!-the garden was a wild!
And man, the hermit, sighed-till woman smiled!
Think not I love him, though I ask for him;
'Tis but a peevish boy:-yet he talks well;-
But what care I for words? yet words do well,
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear;
"But sure, he's proud; and yet his pride becomes him⚫
He'll make a proper man: The best thing in him
Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue
Did make offence, his eye did heal it up.
He is not tall; yet for his years he's tall;
His leg is but so so; and yet 'tis well :
There was a pretty redness in his lip;
A little riper and more lusty red
Than that mix'd in his cheek; 'twas just the difference
Betwixt the constant red, and mingled damask.
There be some women, Silvius, had they mark'd him
In parcels as I did would have gone near
To fall in love with him: but, for my part,
I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet
I have more cause to hate him than to love him:
For what had he to do to chide at me:
He said, mine eyes were black, and my hair black
And, now I am remember'd, scorn'd at me!
I marvel, why I answer'd not again:
But that's all one; omittance is no quittance. Shakspeare
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