“ Ah no! for a darker departure is near;
The war drum is muffled, and black is the bier;
His death bell is tolling: oh! mercy, dispel
Yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell!
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.
Accursed be the fagots, that blaze at his feet,
Where his heart shall be thrown, ere it ceases to beat,
With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale—
LOCHIEL.
—Down, soothless insulter! ”

“ For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,
But man cannot cover what God would reveal;
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring
With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king.
Lo! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath,
Behold where he flies on his desolate path!
[Pg 65] Now in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight:
Rise, rise! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight!
'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors:
Culloden is lost, and my country deplores. ”

“ Waved her dread standard to the breeze of morn,
Pealed her loud drum, and twanged her trumpet horn;
Tumultuous horror brooded o'er her van,
Presaging wrath to Poland—and to man.
Warsaw's last champion from her height surveyed,
Wide o'er the fields, a waste of ruin laid,—
O Heaven! he cried, my bleeding country save!—
Is there no hand on high to shield the brave?
Yet, though destruction sweep those lovely plains,
Rise, fellow-men! our country yet remains!
By that dread name, we wave the sword on high,
And swear for her to live—with her to die! ”

“ Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear,
Closed her bright eye, and curbed her high career;—
Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell,
And Freedom shrieked—as Kosciusko fell.
The sun went down, nor ceased the carnage there,
Tumultuous murder shook the midnight air—
On Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow,
His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below;
The storm prevails, the rampart yields a way,
Bursts the wild cry of horror and dismay.
Hark, as the smoldering piles with thunder fall,
A thousand shrieks for hopeless mercy call! ”

“ Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream!
Robert Burns.
[Pg 198]
TRIUMPH OF CHARIS.
See the chariot at hand here of Love,
Wherein my lady rideth!
Each that draws is a swan, or a dove,
And well the car, Love guideth.
As she goes, all hearts do duty
Unto her beauty,
And, enamored, do wish, so they might
But enjoy such a sight,
That they still were to run by her side
Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.
Do but look on her eyes! they do light
All that Love's world compriseth;
Do but look on her hair! it is bright
As Love's star when it riseth! ”

“ Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.
So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall,
Among bridesmen and kinsmen and brothers and all:
Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword
(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word) ,
"Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?"
"I long wooed your daughter, my suit you denied;—
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide—
And now am I come, with this lost love of mine,
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine. ”

“ Mount, daring warbler!—that love-prompted strain
—'Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond—
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain:
Yet might'st thou seem, proud privilege, to sing
All independent of the leafy spring.
Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine;
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine;
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!
William Wordsworth.
CUMNOR HALL.
The dews of summer night did fall ”

“ Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them
With deafening clamor in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. ”

“ Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.
There, at morn's rosy birth,
Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,
And eve, that round the earth
Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;
There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.
Alike, beneath thine eye,
The deeds of darkness and of light are done;
High towards the starlit sky
Towns blaze, the smoke of battle blots the sun,
The night storm on a thousand hills is loud
And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud. ”

“ Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form,
Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm;
[Pg 182] Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly,
Revenge, or death,—the watchword and reply;
Then pealed the notes, omnipotent to charm,
And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm.
In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few!
From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew:—
Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of Time,
Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime;
Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,
Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe. ”

“ Slow as an oak to woodman's stroke sinks flaming at their marge.
The waves are bright with mirrored light as jacinths on our way.
[Pg 120] When shall the sandy bar be crossed? when shall we find the bay?
The moon is high up in the sky, and now no more we see
The spreading river's either bank, and surging distantly
There booms a sudden thunder as of breakers far away.
Now shall the sandy bar be crossed, now shall we find the bay!
The seagull shrieks high overhead, and dimly to our sight
The moonlit crests of foaming waves gleam towering through the night. ”

“ And in their perilous fall shall thunder, "God!"
Ye living flowers, that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats, sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!
[Pg 217]
Thou, too, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks!
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depths of clouds that veil thy breast,
Thou, too, again, stupendous mountain! ”

“ Comes forth, clammy and bare.
Hark! that's the nightingale.
Telling the selfsame tale
Her song told when this ancient earth was young:
So echoes answered when her song was sung
In the first wooded vale.
We call it love and pain,
The passion of her strain;
And yet we little understand or know:
Why should it not be rather joy that so
Throbs in each throbbing vein?
In separate herds the deer
Lie; here the bucks, and here
The does, and by its mother sleeps the fawn:
Through all the hours of night until the dawn
They sleep, forgetting fear. ”

“ The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted hall;
With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded,
And pages stand mute by the canopied pall;
Through the courts, at deep midnight, the torches are gleaming,
In the proudly arched chapel the banners are beaming,
Far adown the long isle sacred music is streaming,
Lamenting a chief of the people should fall.
But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature,
To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb ”

“ For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood,
And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood.
LOCHIEL.
False Wizard, avaunt! I have marshaled my clan,
Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one!
They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,
And like reapers descend to the harvest of death.
Then welcome be Cumberland's steed to the shock! ”

“ The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning Providence
He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain. ”

“ Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest;
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.
The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,
Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind ”

“ Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me!
I fear no foe with Thee at hand to bless:
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is Death's sting? where, Grave, thy victory?
—I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.
Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies:
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee:—
In life and death, O Lord, abide with me!
Henry F. Lyte.
SONG FROM "PIPPA PASSES."
The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn ”

“ Said a people to a poet—"Go out from among us straightway!
While we are thinking earthly things, thou singest of divine.
There's a little fair brown nightingale, who, sitting in the gateway,
Makes fitter music to our ear, than any song of thine!"
The poet went out weeping—the nightingale ceased chanting,
"Now, wherefore, O thou nightingale, is all thy sweetness done?"—
—"I cannot sing my earthly things, the heavenly poet wanting,
Whose highest harmony includes the lowest under the sun." ”

“ Tho' my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore,
Like ocean weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore,
Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,
While the kindling of life in his bosom remains,
Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,
With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe! ”

“ Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion's coast
(The storms all weathered and the ocean crossed) ,
Shoots into port at some well-havened isle,
Where spices breathe, and brighter seasons smile,
There sits quiescent on the floods, that show
Her beauteous form reflected clear below,
While airs impregnated with incense play
Around her, fanning light her streamers gay;
So thou, with sails how swift! hast reached the shore,
"Where tempests never beat, nor billows roar,"
And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide
Of life long since has anchored by thy side. ”

“ The midnight brought the signal sound of strife,
The morn the marshaling in arms,—the day
Battle's magnificently stern array!
The thunder clouds close o'er it, which when rent
The earth is covered thick with other clay,
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
Rider and horse,—friend, foe,—in one red burial blent! ”

“ The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;
Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives
From land to land ”

“ Fling the red shreds, a footcloth meet for Henry of Navarre.
Ho! maidens of Vienna; Ho! matrons of Lucerne;
Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return.
Ho! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles,
That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spear-men's souls.
Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright;
Ho! burghers of Saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night. ”