This earth, yon sun, and these blue-tinctured skies, Through which it rolls, must have their obsequies: 100 Pluck'd from their orbits, shall the planets fall, And smoke and conflagration cover all: What, then, is man? The creature of a day, By moments spent, and minutes borne away. Time, like a raging torrent, hurries on; Scarce can we say _it is_, but that 'tis gone. Whether, fair shade! with social spirits, tell (Whose properties thou once described so well), Familiar now thou hearest them relate The rites and methods of their happy state: 110 Or if, with forms more fleet, thou roams abroad, And views the great magnificence of God, Points out the courses of the orbs on high, And counts the silver wonders of the sky! Or if, with glowing seraphim, thou greets Heaven's King, and shoutest through the golden streets, That crowds of white-robed choristers display, Marching in triumph through the pearly way? Now art thou raised beyond this world of cares, This weary wilderness, this vale of tears; 120 Forgetting all thy toils and labours past, No gloom of sorrow stains thy peaceful breast. Now, 'midst seraphic splendours shalt thou dwell, And be what only these pure forms can tell. How cloudless now, and cheerful is thy day! What joys, what raptures, in thy bosom play! How bright the sunshine, and how pure the air! There's no difficulty of breathing there. With willing steps a pilgrim at thy shrine, To dew it with my tears the task be mine; 130 In lonely dirge, to murmur o'er thy urn And with new-gather'd flowers thy turf adorn: Nor shall thy image from my bosom part; No force shall rip thee from this bleeding heart. Oft shall I think o'er all I've left in thee, Nor shall oblivion blot thy memory; But grateful love its energy express (The father gone) now to the fatherless. END OF BLAIR'S POEMS. POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM FALCONER. THE LIFE AND POETRY OF WILLIAM FALCONER. It may seem singular how the life of a sailor--a life so full of vicissitude and enterprise, of hair's-breadth escapes, of contact with wild men and wild usages, and of intercourse with a form of nature so vast, so fluctuating, so mysterious, and so terribly sublime as the ocean, which, in its calm and silence, forms an emblem of all that is peaceful and profound, and, in its tempestuous rage, of all that is unreconciled and anarchical in the mind of man, now comparable to a "Cradled child in dreamless slumber bound!"