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WILLIAM AND MARGARET.

'Twas at the silent, solemn hour
When night and morning meet;
In glided Margaret's grimly ghost,
And stood at William's feet.

Her face was like an April-morn,
Clad in a wintry cloud;
And clay-cold was her lily hand,
That held her sable shroud.

So shall the fairest face appear,
When youth and years are flown:
Such is the robe that kings must wear,
When Death has reft their crown.

Her bloom was like the springing flower,
That sips the silver dew;

The rose was budded in her cheek,
Just opening to the view.

But love had, like the canker-worm,

Consum'd her early prime:

The rose grew pale, and left her cheek;

She died before her time.

"Awake!" she cried, "thy true love calls,

Come from her midnight-grave;

Now let thy pity hear the maid,

Thy love refus'd to save.

"This is the dumb and dreary hour, When injur'd ghosts complain;

When yawning graves give up their dead, To haunt the faithless swain.

"Bethink thee, William, of thy fault,
Thy pledge and broken oath!
And give me back my maiden-vow,
And give me back my troth.

"Why did you promise love to me, And not that promise keep?

Why did you swear my eyes were bright, Yet leave those eyes to weep?

"How could you say my face was fair,

And yet that face forsake?

How could you win my virgin-heart,

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Yet leave that heart to break?

Why did you say my lip was sweet,
And made the scarlet pale?

And why did I, young witless maid!
Believe the flattering tale?

"That face, alas! no more is fair,

Those lips no longer red:

Dark are my eyes, now clos'd in death, And every charm is fled.

"The hungry worm my sister is;

This winding-sheet I wear:
And cold and weary lasts our night,

Till that last morn appear.

"But, hark! the cock has warn'd me hence;

A long and late adieu !

Come, see, false man, how low she lies,

Who died for love of you."

The lark sung loud; the morning smil'd,

With beams of rosy

red:

Pale William quak'd in every limb,

And raving left his bed.

He hied him to the fatal place

Where Margaret's body lay;

And stretch'd him on the green-grass turf, That wrapp'd her breathless clay.

And thrice he call'd on Margaret's name,

And thrice he wept full sore;

Then laid his cheek to her cold grave,

And word spoke never more!

EDWARD YOUNG.

BORN 1681.-DIED 1765.

YOUNG's satires have at least the merit of contain-. ing a number of epigrams, and as they appeared rather earlier than those of Pope, they may boast of having afforded that writer some degree of example. Swift's opinion of them, however, seems not to have been unjust, that they should have either been more merry or more angry. One of his tragedies is still popular on the stage, and his Night Thoughts have many admirers both at home and abroad. Of his lyrical poetry he had himself the good sense to think but indifferently. In none of his works is he more spirited and amusing than in his Essay on Original Composition, written at the age of eighty.

The Night Thoughts have been translated into more than one foreign language; and it is usual for foreigners to regard them as eminently characteristic of the peculiar temperament of English genius. Madame de Stael has indeed gravely deduced the genealogy of our national melancholy from Ossian and the Northern Scalds, down to Dr. Young. Few Englishmen, however, will probably be disposed to recognize the author of the Night Thoughts as their national poet by way of eminence. His devotional

gloom is more in the spirit of St. Francis of Asisium, than of an English divine; and his austerity is blended with a vein of whimsical conceit that is still more unlike the plainness of English character. The Night Thoughts certainly contain many splendid and happy conceptions, but their beauty is thickly marred by false wit and overlaboured antithesis: indeed his whole ideas seem to have been in a state of antithesis while he composed the poem. One portion of his fancy appears devoted to aggravate the picture of his desolate feelings, and the other half to contradict that picture by eccentric images and epigrammatic ingenuities. As a poet he was fond of exaggeration, but it was that of the fancy more than of the heart. This appears no less in the noisy hyperboles of his tragedies, than in the studied melancholy of the Night Thoughts, in which he pronounces the simple act of laughter to be half immoral. That he was a pious man, and had felt something from the afflictions described in the Complaint, need not be called in question', but he seems covenanting with himself to be as desolate as possible, as if he had continued the custom ascribed to him at college, of studying with a candle stuck in a human skull; while, at the same time, the feelings and habits of a man of the world, which still adhere

It appears, however, from Sir Herbert Croft's account of his life, that he had not lost the objects of his affection in such rapid succession as he feigns, when he addresses the "Insatiate archer (Death) whose shaft flew thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn."

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