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164

ALNWICK CASTLE.

Of beings born and buried here;
Tales of the peasant and the peer,
Tales of the bridal and the bier,

The welcome and farewell,

Since on their boughs the startled bird
First, in her twilight slumbers, heard
The Norman's curfew-bell.

I wandered through the lofty halls
Trod by the Percys of old fame,
And traced upon the chapel walls
Each high, heroic name,

From him who once his standard set
Where now, o'er mosque and minaret,

Glitter the Sultan's crescent moons;

To him who, when a younger son,
Fought for King George at Lexington,
A Major of Dragoons.

That last half stanza-it has dashed
From my warm lip the sparkling cup;
The light that o'er my eye-beam flashed,
The power that bore my spirit up
Above this bank-note world—is gone;

And Alnwick's but a market-town,
And this, alas! its market-day,

And beasts and borderers throng the way;

ALNWICK CASTLE.

Oxen, and bleating lambs in lots,
Northumbrian boors, and plaided Scots,

Men in the coal and cattle line;

From Teviot's bard and hero land,
From Royal Berwick's beach of sand,
From Wooller, Morpeth, Hexham, and
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

These are not the romantic times
So beautiful in Spenser's rhymes,
So dazzling to the dreaming boy:
Ours are the days of fact, not fable,
Of Knights, but not of the Round Table,
Of Bailie Jarvie, not Rob Roy :

'Tis what 66

our President,” Monroe,

Has called "the era of good feeling :"

The Highlander, the bitterest foe

To modern laws, has felt their blow,
Consented to be taxed, and vote,

And put on pantaloons and coat,
And leave off cattle-stealing:

Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglas in red herrings;
And noble name and cultured land
Palace, and park, and vassal band
Are powerless to the notes of hand

Of Rothschild or the Barings.

165

166

ALNWICK CASTLE.

The age of bargaining, said Burke,

Has come to-day the turbaned Turk,
(Sleep, Richard of the lion heart!
Sleep on, nor from your cearments start,)
Is England's friend and fast ally;
The Moslem tramples on the Greek,
And on the Cross and altar stone,
And Christendom looks tamely on,
And hears the Christian maiden shriek,
And sees the Christian father die;
And not a sabre blow is given

For Greece and fame, for faith and Heaven,
By Europe's craven chivalry.

[graphic]

DIRGE OF ALARIC THE VISIGOTH.

BY E. EVERETT.

[Alaric stormed and spoiled the city of Rome, and was afterward buried in the channel of the river Busentius, the water of which had been diverted from its course that the body might be interred.]

WHEN I am dead, no pageant train

Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,
Nor worthless pomp of homage vain
Stain it with hypocritic tear;

For I will die as I did live,

Nor take the boon I cannot give.

[blocks in formation]

Ye shall not fawn before my dust,

In hollow circumstance of woes;
Nor sculptured clay, with lying breath,
Insult the clay that moulds beneath.

Ye shall not pile, with servile toil,
Your monuments upon my breast,

Nor yet within the common soil

Lay down the wreck of power to rest;
Where man can boast that he has trod

On him that was 66 the scourge of God."

168

DIRGE OF ALARIC THE VISIGOTH.

But ye the mountain stream shall turn,
And lay its secret channel bare,
And hollow, for your sovereign's urn,
A resting-place for ever there :
Then bid its everlasting springs
Flow back upon the king of kings;
And never be the secret said,
Until the deep give up his dead.

My gold and silver ye shall fling

Back to the clods that gave them birth ;-
The captured crowns of many a king,
The ransom of a conquered earth:
For, e'en though dead, will I control
The trophies of the capitol.

But when, beneath the mountain tide,
Ye've laid your monarch down to rot,

Ye shall not rear upon its side

Pillar or mound to mark the spot;
For long enough the world has shook
Beneath the terrors of my look;

And now that I have run my race,
The astonished realms shall rest a space.

My course was like a river deep,

And from the northern hills I burst,

Across the world, in wrath to sweep,

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