Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

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 "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

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.

You'll ask if yet the Percy lives

In the armed pomp of feudal state?
The present representative

Of Hotspur and his "gentle Kate,"
Are some half-dozen serving men,
In the drab coat of William Penn;

A chambermaid, whose lip and eye,

And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling,

Spoke nature's aristocracy;

And one, half groom, half seneschal,

Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall,

From donjon-keep to turret wall,

For ten-and-sixpence sterling.

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.

Ye shall not raise a marble bust
Upon the spot where I repose;
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 "the scourge of God."

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,

DIRGE OF ALARIC THE VISIGOTH.

And where I went the spot was cursed, Nor blade of grass again was seen Where Alaric and his hosts had been.

See how their haughty barriers fail
Beneath the terror of the Goth,
Their iron-breasted legions quail
Before my ruthless sabaoth,
And low the queen of empires kneels,
And grovels at my chariot-wheels.

Not for myself did I ascend

In judgment my triumphal car;
'Twas God alone on high did send
The avenging Scythian to the war,
To shake abroad, with iron-hand,
The appointed scourge of his command.

With iron hand that scourge I reared

O'er guilty king and guilty realm;
Destruction was the ship I steered,

And vengeance sat upon the helm,
When, launched in fury on the flood,
I ploughed my way through seas of blood,
And, in the stream their hearts had spilt,
Washed out the long arrears of guilt.

169

« AnteriorContinuar »