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THIS was another distinguished writer of songs, whose productions are known, and deservedly admired, among all classes. Thomas Haynes Bayly was born in 1797. As he was connected by relationship with several noble families, and had the prospect of a considerable inheritance, besides the fortune he received with his wife, he commenced life under the happiest auspices, and took his natural place in fashionable and elevated society. But unforeseen calamities swept away all his sources of independence, and he was reduced from a state of affluence, to toil as an author, for a scanty and precarious subsistence. In this condition, he wrote those extensive collections of beautiful Songs which are to be heard in every assembly, from the palace to that of the humblest tavern; and of many who were hanging with rapture over his tender and elegant compositions, it might have been justly said, in the language of a still more talented writer of song

"Ah, little they think who delight in his strains,
That the heart of the minstrel is breaking!"

Mr. Bayly was also the writer of two or three Novels, and about thirty or forty pieces for the Stage, of which some of the latter were attended with great success, although their author, from want of habits of economy, derived no permanent benefit from their popularity. He died on the 22d of April, 1839.

WHY COMES HE NOT?

Why comes he not?-why comes he not?
Oh sister, can you say?

My boy and I have watch'd the path

Together all the day.

I'm jealous of the eager child,

I fain would be alone,

That his first coming may be seen

By no eye save my own.

-'tis he-I hear his steed,

He comes

Ah, would he were in sight!
You think I am deceived? But hark,
You hear him-I was right.
Fool that I was—had I gone forth,
Beyond that shady grove,

I might already have beheld

The form of him I love.

He darts like lightning from the trees,
He waves his hand aloft;

Again I hear those words of love,
That I have heard so oft.

I envy not the dame whose lord
Is never forced to roam,

She never knew the boundless joy
Of such a welcome home!

HARK! HARK! I HEAR A DISTANT DRUM.

Hark! hark! I hear a distant drum;-
The tramp of steeds,-they come! they come!
With weapons bright and banners gay,
They pass along in proud array;

We view the pomp of war alone,

Its gloom is gone:

And sweet to-night their dreams will be
Of love, and joy, and victory.

But yon fair girl, in mute despair,
Looks round for one-who is not there;
She watches then till all are past,
And scarce believes she sees the last;
She lingers still-yet all are gone-
She stands alone!

Her Edward comes not,-where is he?
Alas, can this be victory?

IT IS NOT ON THE BATTLE FIELD.

It is not on the battle field
That I would wish to die;

It is not on a broken shield

I'd breathe my latest sigh:

And though a soldier knows not how
To dread a soldier's doom;

I ask no laurel for my brow,
No trophy for my tomb.

It is not that I scorn the wreath
A soldier proudly wears;

It is not that I fear the death

A soldier proudly dares:

When slaughter'd comrades round me lie,

I'd be the last to yield;

But yet I would not wish to die
Upon the Battle field.

When faint and bleeding in the fray,
Oh! still let me retain
Enough of life to crawl away

To this sweet vale again;

For like the wounded weary dove
That flutters to its nest,

I fain would reach my own dear Love,
And die upon her breast.

HE CAME AT MORN.

He came at morn to the lady's bower-
He sang, and play'd till the noon-tide hour;-
He sang of war-he sang of love,
Of battle field, and peaceful grove:
The lady could have stay'd all day,
To hear that gentle minstrel play;
And when she saw the minstrel go,
The lady's tears began to flow.

At mid-day, with her page she went
To grace a splendid tournament;
And there she saw an armed knight,
With golden helm and plumage white;
With grace he rode his sable steed,-
And after many a martial deed,

He knelt to her with words most sweet,
And laid his trophies at her feet.

At night, in robes both rich and rare,
With jewels sparkling in her hair,
She sought the dance, and smiling came
A youthful prince, and breathed her name;
He sang-it was the minstrel's strain!
He knelt-she saw the knight again!
With lovers three-how blest to find
The charms of all in one combined!

THIS, the most popular, prolific, and successful, of modern authors, was born at Edinburgh, on the 15th of August, 1771. He was educated, during boyhood, at the High School of that city, but without giving any indication of those great powers which afterwards astonished the literary world. In consequence of an attack of ill health, by which he was necessarily precluded from study, he read for amusement every history, tale, and romance, that fell in his way-by which circumstance the whole tenour of his future intellectual career was decided. The law, to which he was brought up as a profession, lost its charms, and a chapter of Froissart or Amadis de Gaul had more attractions in his eyes than the Pandects of Justinian. From his multifarious reading, his mind was stored with an immense mass of fact and fiction, which he had a strong memory to retain, and a glowing imagination to vivify. Thus qualified to become either the novelist or the poet, it is probable that accident alone decided him as to which of these departments should have the honour of his first choice. The decision was for poetry, and his first attempt was in the subsidiary capacity of translator, by publishing his versions of Leonore, and other German poems, in 1796. The effort was unsuccessful, but he was too conscious of his own latent powers to be discouraged. He persevered, and translated Goethe's Tragedy of Goetz of Berlichingen, which was equally unsuccessful. Several original pieces, which he published about the same period, however, in Lewis's Tales of Wonder, attracted more favourable notice. He now resolved to break loose from his trammels, and travel in an independent path of his own. In 1805, therefore, appeared his first great original work, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and the sensation which it produced upon the public mind was truly electric. Men were astonished to see the times of old border feuds and wars recited once more in the style of the ancient ballads, but combined with all the energy of the ancient and the graces of modern poetry-it was something wholly new, and undreamt of, in the world of literature. Scott had now discovered where his strength lay, and he was not slow to use it. In 1808, The Lay was followed by Marmion, a poem of a loftier character than the former, in which he endeavoured, and with success, to improve his style and versification. His next poem was The Lady of the Lake, incontestably the best, as it was the most popular, of all his poetical productions. In 1811, he published Don Roderick, which with a few brilliant exceptions is a heavy and unreadable production, and was but coldly received by the public. As he had been so successful in the descriptions of Highland scenery in his Lady of the Lake, he resolved to attempt the same experiment with that of England, and accordingly, in 1813, he made a poetical foray across the border, and produced Rokeby but his muse, that had been so vigorous and lively upon her native soil, seemed to sicken amidst the soberness of the southern landscape, and Rokeby was proclaimed by the public a decided failure. It was grievous to be thus dethroned, after he had reigned in the regions of poetry without a rival, and he tried to retrieve his reputation by a Scottish subject, and a popular hero; but The Lord of the Isles, which was published in 1814, failed to charm, although Bruce and Bannockburn were summoned to the rescue. Besides, a whole host of imitators had started up, whose rhymes grated upon the public ear, so that there was a universal cry for something new-and a poet had already appeared by whom the mightiest of his contemporaries were soon to be overthrown. Scott saw, that as a poet he had ceased to captivate the multitude, and he wisely retired from the field, without hazarding a competition with the author of Childe Harold and The Corsair. At this point, however, when the history of a poet commonly terminates, he was to astonish the public with an unexpected transformation. The Northern Minstrel, like his own Sir Thomas of Ercildon, suddenly became the Northern Wizard, and that series of wonderful works, commonly called The Waverley Novels, arrested the attention, not of one country, but of the whole civilized world, and procured for him a reputa tion compared with which all that he had hitherto acquired was of trivial value. After a life of labour, such as few literary men have undergone, Sir Walter Scott died on the 21st of September, 1832.

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If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight;
For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild but to flout the ruins grey.

When the broken arches are black in night,

And each shafted oriel glimmers white;

When the cold light's uncertain shower

Streams on the ruin'd central tower;

When buttress and buttress alternately
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;

When silver edges the imagery,

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;

When distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave;

Then go-but go alone the while-
Then view St. David's ruin'd pile;
And, home returning, soothly swear,
Was never scene so sad and fair!

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Now slow and faint he led the way,
Where, cloister'd round, the garden lay;

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