SHAKSPEARE ODE. Down! trembling wing-shall insect weakness keep The sun-defying eagle's sweep? A mortal strike celestial strings, And feebly echo what a seraph sings? Who now shall grace the glowing throne, Where, all unrivalled, all alone, Bold Shakspeare sat, and looked creation through, That throne is cold-that lyre in death unstrung, On whose proud note delighted Wonder hung. Yet Old Oblivion, as in wrath he sweeps, 159 One spot shall spare—the grave where Shakspeare sleeps. Rulers and ruled in common gloom may lie, But Nature's laureate bards shall never die. Art's chiselled boast, and Glory's trophied shore, Must live in numbers, or can live no more. While sculptured Jove some nameless waste may claim, On whose broad sway the sun for ever smiles, 160 SHAKSPEARE ODE. O thou! to whose creative power We dedicate the festal hour, While Grace and Goodness round the altar stand, Learning's anointed train, and Beauty's rose-lipped band Realms yet unborn, in accents now unknown, His banners planting round the land he loves, Our Roman-hearted fathers broke Thy parent empire's galling yoke, But thou, harmonious monarch of the mind, And what her mighty Lion lost her mightier Swan shall save. ALNWICK CASTLE. BY F. G. HALLECK. HOME of the Percy's highborn race, ALNWICK CASTLE. 163 One solitary turret gray Still tells, in melancholy glory, The legend of the Cheviot day, The Percy's proudest border story. The music of the trump and drum; Wild roses by the Abbey towers Are gay in their young bud and bloom: They were born of a race of funeral flowers That garlanded, in long-gone hours, A Templar's knightly tomb. He died, the sword in his mailed hand, On the holiest spot of the Blessed Land, Where the Cross was damped with his dying breath; When blood ran free as festal wine, And the sainted air of Palestine Was thick with the darts of death. Wise with the lore of centuries, What tales, if there be "tongues in trees," Those giant oaks could tell, |