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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,
The minstrel monarch of the worlds he drew?

That throne is cold-that lyre in death unstrung,

On whose proud note delighted Wonder hung.

Yet Old Oblivion, as in wrath he sweeps,

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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,
Still rolls the Olympic car in Pindar's fame :
Troy's doubtful walls, in ashes passed away,
Yet frown on Greece in Homer's deathless lay:
Rome, slowly sinking in her crumbling fanes,
Stands all immortal in her Maro's strains:-
So, too, yon giant empress of the isles,

On whose broad sway the sun for ever smiles,
To Time's unsparing rage one day must bend,
And all her triumphs in her Shakspeare end!

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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,
Thy song shall learn, and bless it for their own.
Deep in the West, as Independence roves,

His banners planting round the land he loves,
Where nature sleeps in Eden's infant grace,
In time's full hour shall spring a glorious race :-
Thy name, thy verse, thy language shall they bear,
And deck for thee the vaulted temple there.

Our Roman-hearted fathers broke

Thy parent empire's galling yoke,

But thou, harmonious monarch of the mind,
Around their sons a gentler chain shall bind ; —
Still o'er our land shall Albion's sceptre wave,

And what her mighty Lion lost her mightier Swan shall

save.

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ALNWICK CASTLE.

BY F. G. HALLECK.

HOME of the Percy's highborn race,
Home of their beautiful and brave,
Alike their birth and burial place,
Their cradle, and their grave!
Still sternly o'er the castle gate
Their house's Lion stands in state,
As in his proud departed hours;
And warriors frown in stone on high,
And feudal banners "flout the sky"
Above his princely towers.

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ALNWICK CASTLE.

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One solitary turret gray

Still tells, in melancholy glory,

The legend of the Cheviot day,

The Percy's proudest border story.
That day its roof was triumph's arch;
Then rang, from aisle to pictured dome,
The light step of the soldier's march,

The music of the trump and drum;
And babe, and sire, the old, the young,
And the monk's hymn, and minstrel's song,
And woman's pure kiss, sweet and long,
Welcomed her warrior home.

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,

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