MY MOTHER. 249 



contrast was there ! A few hours before all had been beauty and 

 plenty, for in this southern clime nature in November sports in a 

 second summer ; but, under the ruthless foot of war, all was desola- 

 tion and ruin, every trim enclosure was levelled, every out-house 

 was shattered, and the late smiling orchard and garden were a 

 wilderness strewed with slaughtered Frenchmen. Until this mo- 

 ment the owner of the house had escaped my observation. I now 

 saw him in the garden. He was a fine-looking Basque peasant, 

 wearing the Alpine features of his race : the lean, but active and 

 sinewy form, the fair skin, the light hair, the gray eyes, the high 

 cheek-bones, the whole crowned with a bonnet of the same shape 

 and colour as that worn on the blue hills of Scotland, gave me to- 

 wards him, besides the common sentiment of humanity, the feeling 

 with which one regards a countryman met unexpectedly in a distant 

 land. I spoke to him in French, he understood it not ; in Spanish, 

 but of this he was equally ignorant; the Lengua Bascuenza was his 

 only tongue, and with this / was unacquainted. But what need was 

 there of words ? The mournful look he cast on the scene of desola- 

 tion, and on his blue-eyed children clustered around him in speech- 

 less amazement and terror, spoke far more eloquently than words. 

 There was that in his heart which no tongue could utter. My own 

 thoughts and feelings at the moment I will not attempt to describe, 

 excepting so far as they are embodied in these lines of Byron : 



" O ! monarchs could you taste the mirth you mar, 

 Not in the toils of glory would you fret, 

 The hoarse, dull drum would sleep, and man be happy yet." 



H.N. 



MY MOTHER. 



MY Mother ! Oh, what tenderness appears 

 In that loved name ; nurse of my infancy ! 

 (Soothing my cries through many an anxious day,) 

 Guide of my youth ! friend of my riper years ! 

 My Mother, well my song may be of thee, 

 For thou didst lead my infant steps to God ; 

 Strewing with Love's sweet flowers the narrow road 

 That leads from time to blest Eternity. 

 Though now my home is distant far from thee, 

 And other ties are twined around my heart ; 

 Yet thy dear image never shall depart : 

 Thy looks of love live in my memory ; 

 Still I retrace them with a fond delight, 

 Thou art my thought by day, my dream by night. 



