MALCOLM'S SCENES OF WAR*.

THERE is much true poetical feeling in Mr. Aar-corm—it is a pity that it is all in one strain: he is perpetually plaintive; and the images he seeks to illustrate his sorrows are invariably taken from the fleeting, fading, and shadowy objects of nature, in accordance with the melancholy musings of a sickly and disappointed man. Mr. MALcorm's former publication was a high-spirited, soldier- like sketch of a portion of the Peninsular war; and though, in the • ornamental parts of that piece of description, he did give signs of

being poetically inclined, we scarcely expected next to find: him weeping and wailing, dreaming and moaning, nay, we should almost say puling, if it were not that his verses have generally a

graceful tenderness that saves them from so degrading an epithet.

How has this come to pass ? We fear half-pay does not agree with our soldier poet. Has he left some Donna Inez in Spain; or has the bleak air of his native hills thrown him into a consumption ? We have complained of a want of variety, but there is no want of beauties of the same kind ; of which we will give a few accept- able specimens. Take for an example, a little piece called "Human Sorrow:" it is pretty, and perhaps true ; which is more than enough

in a song. " O'er her lost son a mother wept,

A sister's tears flowed wild and free, For with the fallen brave he slept, Far, far beyond the sea : But days and months and years rolled o'er, Till bleeding hearts forgot their pain; Smiles beamed on faded cheeks once inure, And eyes looked bright again.

" But far upon the fields of Spain, Above the spot where he reposed, The tears from Beauty's eyes did ram Until those eyes were closed.

Yea, graves of kindred may be wet With tears friends shed their turf above; But these will fail, and those forget :— There's nothing true but love."

It is in this gloomy style that he commences a poem called

"The Closing Year."

"While midnight's chime beats deep and drear The pulses of the parting year, I will not hail another's birth With reckless and unseemly mirth : By me its welcome shall be said, As in the presence of the dead.

A smile the new-born year to greet, A silent tear to that gone by ;

As blending in our bosoms meet

The dreams of hope and memory.

Again I hail each inmate gay Assembled in the festal room; But some, alas ! are far away, Some sleeping in the tomb A narrower circle seems to meet Around the board :—each vacant seat A dark and sad remembrance brings

Of faded and forsaken things ;-

Of youth's sweet promise to the heart; Of hopes that came but to depart, Like phantom-waters of the waste,

That glad the sight, but shun the taste ; Of bright eyes veiled in cold eclipse,—

The balm, the breath, and bloom of lips Where oft in silent rapture ours Have clung like bees to honeyed flowers ; With their sweet voices past away, E'en like the harp's expiring lay.

But fled and gone with all its ills And dreams of good,—a long adieu! Unto the year beyond the hills, And welcome to the new :

* scenes of War, and other Poems. By John Malcolm. Edinburgh, 1828. Oliver and Boyd.

And hoping oft to meet again, To hail the sacred season's call, Thus hand in hand the bowl we drain,- ' A good new-year to all "

In the verses on " The Mother and Child," he thinks of the Mother's hopes and fears:— •

Ah 1 could,she with prophetic eye Explore that infant's future doom,— Behold his path before her lie,

Stretch from the cradle to the tomb,—

Perchance, with aching heart, she'd turn Distracted from the sickening sight ;

To wish her babe had ne'er been born, Ne'er wakened from unconscious night."

There is undoubtedly nothing very new in this : novelty, in fact, is not Mr. MALeoem's forte, but he touches a commonplace with a graceful pencil. In the poem called "The Campaign," he takes a poet's view of the death of the brave : there is some tenderness in it, but we should have supposed it written rather by the sister of some hero of the 42nd than the hero himself.

" But oh ! for them to whom their native shore

Arose to set in darkness evermore,

Whose fate but one sad solace could supply,

To gaze upon their father-land and die ;

And them who but survived the wounds of war, To close their eyes from every land afar, And rind a shroud and sepulchre in thee, Thou lone, eternal, melancholy sea, For ever kindling o'er the slumberer's head, Thou faithful keeper of the countless dead.!

Thus, where the loud reveillie's call at morn Shall break no more their sleep, cold, dark, and horn, Where the pale mourner cannot come to shed The tear of sorrow o'er the narrow bed, Or strew with gentle hands above their bier

The ineense-breathing offerings of the year,—

'Mid field and flood I've seen my earlY friends Laid where, alas ! all human friendship ends;

Yea, lived to see the hearts for them that sighed Forget their griefs, and tears of kindred dried:

Each faded cheek the rose of health regain, And eyes bedimmod with tears grow bright again Their memory fade amid their native bowers, No more to cloud the heart in festal hours, Save when perchance some simple touching words, Wove into song, awake the bosom's chords,

Such as so sadly breathe in Scottish lay, And wail the " Forest thwers all wede away."

So sleep the brave, flair mortal warfare o'er, Where pain and peril ne'er shall reach them more. What though for them there toll'd no passintr-laill,— Ten thousand thunders pealed their parting knell; The cannon's blaze did light them to their rest, Upon the green earth's calm and peaceful breast, Far from their own loved land in slumber laid, Sound as the sleeper in his native shade.

What though above their (lark and distant home

There tower no temple's arch, no pompous dome,—

O'er them a loftier canopy expands, A mightier temple's dome, not made with hands. What though they rest where Friendship may not bring,

To deck their graves, the garlands of the Spring,—

For them her greenest wreaths shall Memory twine,

For them each gentle bosom be a shrine; Each lonely hour shall thoughts of them recall,

Mournful, but sweet as music's dying fall,

And holiest dews of heaven their graves shall wet,

When hearts grow cold, and love itself forget.

aVc11 have they seeped a world w hem all that's made

:\ost fair but cheats the heart, and blooms to fade; W here e'en its purest dreams of present joy The heart with many a future pana7 niubt boy ; Where Love himself, arrayed in smiles and bloom, Is leagued with Death, and caters for the tomb ; In whose bright blush and lip-enwreathing smile I trace the deep and all-resistless wile

By which he wins from his too willing slave

Unceasing victims for the silent grave :

For the glad birth-song heralds but the knell, And all must end in that wild word, Farewell !' " Mr. MALCOLM has adopted a motto which would seem to indi-

cate that he understands his own failing :—

" I gave my harp to Sorrow's hand ;

And she hath ruled the chords so long, They will not speak at my command, They warble only to her song,"—MoNTGomanv.

This may do all #ery well for a first little volume ; but we advise the poet, if he proposes to write further, either to string anew or tune afresh the said harp.