ALNWICK CASTLE. Oxen, and bleating lambs in lots, From Teviot's bard and hero land, From Royal Berwick's beach of sand, These are not the romantic times Has called "the era of good feeling :" And put on pantaloons and coat, Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt, Of Rothschild or the Barings. 165 The age of bargaining, said Burke, Has come to-day the turbaned Turk, For Greece and fame, for faith and Heaven, You'll ask if yet the Percy lives In the armed pomp of feudal state? Of Hotspur and his "gentle Kate," 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, For I will die as I did live, Ye shall not raise a marble bust In hollow circumstance of woes; Ye shall not pile, with servile toil, Nor yet within the common soil Lay down the wreck of power to rest; On him that was "the scourge of God." But ye the mountain stream shall turn, 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; And now that I have run my race, 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 Not for myself did I ascend In judgment my triumphal car; With iron hand that scourge I reared O'er guilty king and guilty realm; And vengeance sat upon the helm, 169 |