POEMS. 101 



More cherished, though darker their memory shall be, 

 Than that of the rose or the violet hy me. 



Ye rocks, whose rough summits seem lost in the clouds, 

 Ye fountains, ye caves, and ye dark waving woods, 

 In the still voice of memory ye bid me to mourn 

 For the joys and the years that must never return, 

 The years ere the gay hopes of youth were laid low, 

 Or hope half-despondent had wept o'er the blow, 

 The joys, ere my knowledge of mankind began 

 By proving the toils and the sorrows of man. 



Yet why should I sorrow ? poor child of decay, 

 Myself, like my pleasures, must vanish away, 

 And life in the view of my spirit may seein 

 The tossing confused of a feverish drearn. 

 Yes, life is a dream, a wild dream where the will 

 Striveth vainly the precepts of right to fulfil ; 

 A dream where the dreamer to sorrow is tied ; 

 A dream where proud reason but weakly can guide : 

 It controls not my spirit, despite of my will, 

 The joys of the bypast are haunting me still. 



And oft when all bright on my night slumbers break 

 The spirits of pleasures I prize when awake, 

 When I seize them with gladness and revel in joy, 

 Comes the beam of the morning my bliss to destroy ; 

 Away on the light wings of slumber they fly, 

 While their memory remains, and I languish and sigh. 



days of bright pleasure ! days of delight ! 

 From me ye for ever have winged your flight. 

 But the calm pensive Muse still remains to beguile 

 The day of dark thought, of affliction and toil ; 

 By the gloom of the present the past to endear, 

 By the joys of the bypast the present to cheer.' 



In a poetical epistle to a friend, whom I take to be 

 Ross himself, we have a significant glimpse of Miller's 

 feelings with respect to the lawlessness of his school- 

 days. 



' Oh ! well to thee are all those foibles known, 

 Which to a stranger I would blush to own ; 

 For well you knew me when in youth I strayed; 

 ***** 

 When of untutored genius weakly vain, 



1 spurned instruction with a vile disdain ; 

 Yet dared t' expect, unskilled in classic lore, 



To song's proud heights the untutored Muse would soar. 

 Vain hope ! These rude, unpolished lines must show 

 How weak my thoughts, how harsh my numbers flow.' 



