BRIAN'S PROPHECY.

BY SCOTT.

RODERICK! it is a fearful strife,
For man endow'd with mortal life,
Whose shroud of sentient clay can still
Feel feverish pang and fainting chill,
Whose eye can stare in stony trance,
Whose hair can rouse like warrior's lance,-
'Tis hard for such to view, unfurl'd,
The curtain of the future world.

Yet, witness every quaking limb,
My sunken pulse, mine eye-balls dim,
My soul with harrowing anguish torn,
This for my chieftain have I borne !-
The shapes that sought my fearful couch,
A human tongue may ne'er avouch;
No mortal man, save he, who, bred
Between the living and the dead,
Is gifted beyond nature's law,
Had e'er survived to say he saw.
At length the fateful answer came,
In characters of living flame!

Not spoke in word, nor blazed in scroll,
But borne and branded on my soul;

WHICH SPILLS THE FOREMOST FOEMAN'S LIFE,

THAT PARTY CONQUERS IN THE STRIFE.

MIDNIGHT IMAGININGS.

BY JOANNA BAILLIE.

Ir wears, methinks, upon the midnight hour.
It is a dark and fearful night: the moon

Is wrapp'd in sable clouds: the chill blast sounds
Like dismal lamentations. Ay, who knows
What voices mix with the dark midnight winds!
Nay, as I pass'd that yawning cavern's mouth,
A whispering sound, unearthly, reach'd my ear,
And o'er my head a chilly coldness crept.

Are there not wicked fiends and damned sprites, Whom yawning charnels, and th' unfathom'd depths

Of secret darkness, at this fearful hour,
Do upwards send, to watch, unseen, around
The murderer's death-bed, at his fatal term,
Ready to hail with dire and horrid welcome,
Their future mate?-I do believe there are.