| |
| HOME of the Percys’ high-born 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. |
| |
| A gentle hill its side inclines, |
| Lovely in England’s fadeless green, |
| To meet the quiet stream which winds |
| Through this romantic scene |
| As silently and sweetly still, |
| As when at evening on that hill, |
| While summer’s wind blew soft and low, |
| Seated by gallant Hotspur’s side, |
| His Katherine was a happy bride |
| A thousand years ago. |
| |
| Gaze on the Abbey’s ruined pile: |
| Does not the succoring ivy, keeping |
| Her watch around it, seem to smile, |
| As o’er a loved one sleeping? |
| One solitary turret gray |
| Still tells, in melancholy glory, |
| The legend of the Cheviot day, |
| The Percys’ proudest border story. |
| That day its roof was triumph’s arch; |
| Then rang from isle 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, |
| 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 lips the sparkling cup; |
| The light that o’er my eyebeam 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; |
| 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: |
| ’T is 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. |
| |
| The age of bargaining, said Burke, |
| Has come: to-day the turbaned Turk |
| (Sleep, Richard of the lion heart! |
| Sleep on, nor from your cerements 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 representatives |
| 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. |
| |
| |
| Burns |
| | | To a Rose Brought from Near Alloway Kirk, in Ayrshire, in the Autumn of 1822 |
| |
| |
| WILD Rose of Alloway! my thanks; |
| Thou ’mindst me of that autumn noon |
| When first we met upon “the banks |
| And braes of bonny Doon.” |
| |
| Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree’s bough, |
| My sunny hour was glad and brief; |
| We ’ve crossed the winter sea, and thou |
| Art withered—flower and leaf. |
| |
| And will not thy death-doom be mine— |
| The doom of all things wrought of clay— |
| And withered my life’s leaf like thine, |
| Wild rose of Alloway? |
| |
| Not so his memory,—for his sake |
| My bosom bore thee far and long, |
| His—who a humbler flower could make |
| Immortal as his song. |
| |
| The memory of Burns—a name |
| That calls, when brimmed her festal cup, |
| A nation’s glory and her shame, |
| In silent sadness up. |
| |
| A nation’s glory—be the rest |
| Forgot—she ’s canonized his mind; |
| And it is joy to speak the best |
| We may of human kind. |
| |
| I ’ve stood beside the cottage-bed |
| Where the Bard-peasant first drew breath; |
| A straw-thatched roof above his head, |
| A straw-wrought couch beneath. |
| |
| And I have stood beside the pile, |
| His monument—that tells to Heaven |
| The homage of earth’s proudest isle |
| To that Bard-peasant given! |
| |
| Bid thy thoughts hover o’er that spot, |
| Boy-minstrel, in thy dreaming hour; |
| And know, however low his lot, |
| A Poet’s pride and power: |
| |
| The pride that lifted Burns from earth, |
| The power that gave a child of song |
| Ascendency o’er rank and birth, |
| The rich, the brave, the strong; |
| |
| And if despondency weigh down |
| Thy spirit’s fluttering pinions then, |
| Despair—thy name is written on |
| The roll of common men. |
| |
| There have been loftier themes than his, |
| And longer scrolls, and louder lyres, |
| And lays lit up with Poesy’s |
| Purer and holier fires: |
| |
| Yet read the names that know not death; |
| Few nobler ones than Burns are there; |
| And few have won a greener wreath |
| Than that which binds his hair. |
| |
| His is that language of the heart, |
| In which the answering heart would speak,— |
| Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start, |
| Or the smile light the cheek; |
| |
| And his that music, to whose tone |
| The common pulse of man keeps time, |
| In cot or castle’s mirth or moan, |
| In cold or sunny clime. |
| |
| And who hath heard his song, nor knelt |
| Before its spell with willing knee, |
| And listened, and believed, and felt |
| The Poet’s mastery |
| |
| O’er the mind’s sea, in calm and storm, |
| O’er the heart’s sunshine and its showers, |
| O’er Passion’s moments bright and warm, |
| O’er Reason’s dark, cold hours; |
| |
| On fields where brave men “die or do,” |
| In halls where rings the banquet’s mirth, |
| Where mourners weep, where lovers woo, |
| From throne to cottage-hearth? |
| |
| What sweet tears dim the eye unshed, |
| What wild vows falter on the tongue, |
| When “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,” |
| Or “Auld Lang Syne” is sung! |
| |
| Pure hopes, that lift the soul above, |
| Come with his Cotter’s hymn of praise, |
| And dreams of youth, and truth, and love, |
| With “Logan’s” banks and braes. |
| |
| And when he breathes his master-lay |
| Of Alloway’s witch-haunted wall, |
| All passions in our frames of clay |
| Come thronging at his call. |
| |
| Imagination’s world of air, |
| And our own world, its gloom and glee, |
| Wit, pathos, poetry, are there, |
| And death’s sublimity. |
| |
| And Burns—though brief the race he ran, |
| Though rough and dark the path he trod, |
| Lived—died—in form and soul a Man, |
| The image of his God. |
| |
| Through care, and pain, and want, and woe, |
| With wounds that only death could heal, |
| Tortures—the poor alone can know, |
| The proud alone can feel; |
| |
| He kept his honesty and truth, |
| His independent tongue and pen, |
| And moved, in manhood as in youth, |
| Pride of his fellow-men. |
| |
| Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong, |
| A hate of tyrant and of knave, |
| A love of right, a scorn of wrong, |
| Of coward and of slave; |
| |
| A kind, true heart, a spirit high, |
| That could not fear and would not bow, |
| Were written in his manly eye |
| And on his manly brow. |
| |
| Praise to the bard! his words are driven, |
| Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown, |
| Where’er, beneath the sky of heaven, |
| The birds of fame have flown. |
| |
| Praise to the man! a nation stood |
| Beside his coffin with wet eyes, |
| Her brave, her beautiful, her good, |
| As when a loved one dies. |
| |
| And still, as on his funeral-day, |
| Men stand his cold earth-couch around, |
| With the mute homage that we pay |
| To consecrated ground. |
| |
| And consecrated ground it is, |
| The last, the hallowed home of one |
| Who lives upon all memories, |
| Though with the buried gone. |
| |
| Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines, |
| Shrines to no code nor creed confined— |
| The Delphian vales, the Palestines, |
| The Meccas of the mind. |
| |
| Sages with wisdom’s garland wreathed, |
| Crowned kings, and mitred priests of power, |
| And warriors with their bright swords sheathed, |
| The mightiest of the hour; |
| |
| And lowlier names, whose humble home |
| Is lit by fortune’s dimmer star, |
| Are there—o’er wave and mountain come, |
| From countries near and far; |
| |
| Pilgrims whose wandering feet have pressed |
| The Switzer’s snow, the Arab’s sand, |
| Or trod the piled leaves of the West, |
| My own green forest-land. |
| |
| All ask the cottage of his birth, |
| Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung, |
| And gather feelings not of earth |
| His fields and streams among. |
| |
| They linger by the Doon’s low trees, |
| And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr, |
| And round thy sepulchres, Dumfries! |
| The poet’s tomb is there. |
| |
| But what to them the sculptor’s art, |
| His funeral columns, wreaths and urns? |
| Wear they not graven on the heart |
| The name of Robert Burns? |
| |
|
| |
| AT midnight, in his guarded tent, |
| The Turk was dreaming of the hour |
| When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, |
| Should tremble at his power: |
| In dreams, through camp and court, he bore |
| The trophies of a conqueror; |
| In dreams his song of triumph heard; |
| Then wore his monarch’s signet ring: |
| Then pressed that monarch’s throne—a king; |
| As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, |
| As Eden’s garden bird. |
| |
| At midnight, in the forest shades, |
| Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, |
| True as the steel of their tried blades, |
| Heroes in heart and hand. |
| There had the Persian’s thousands stood, |
| There had the glad earth drunk their blood |
| On old Platæa’s day; |
| And now there breathed that haunted air |
| The sons of sires who conquered there, |
| With arm to strike and soul to dare, |
| As quick, as far as they. |
| |
| An hour passed on—the Turk awoke; |
| That bright dream was his last; |
| He woke—to hear his sentries shriek, |
| “To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!” |
| He woke—to die midst flame, and smoke, |
| And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke, |
| And death-shots falling thick and fast |
| As lightnings from the mountain-cloud; |
| And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, |
| Bozzaris cheer his band: |
| “Strike—till the last armed foe expires; |
| Strike—for your altars and your fires; |
| Strike—for the green graves of your sires; |
| God—and your native land!” |
| |
| They fought—like brave men, long and well; |
| They piled that ground with Moslem slain, |
| They conquered—but Bozzaris fell, |
| Bleeding at every vein. |
| His few surviving comrades saw |
| His smile when rang their proud hurrah, |
| And the red field was won; |
| Then saw in death his eyelids close |
| Calmly, as to a night’s repose, |
| Like flowers at set of sun. |
| |
| Come to the bridal-chamber, Death! |
| Come to the mother’s, when she feels, |
| For the first time, her first-born’s breath; |
| Come when the blessed seals |
| That close the pestilence are broke, |
| And crowded cities wail its stroke; |
| Come in consumption’s ghastly form, |
| The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; |
| Come when the heart beats high and warm |
| With banquet-song, and dance, and wine; |
| And thou art terrible—the tear, |
| The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, |
| And all we know, or dream, or fear |
| Of agony are thine. |
| |
| But to the hero, when his sword |
| Has won the battle for the free, |
| Thy voice sounds like a prophet’s word; |
| And in its hollow tones are heard |
| The thanks of millions yet to be. |
| Come, when his task of fame is wrought— |
| Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought— |
| Come in her crowning hour—and then |
| Thy sunken eye’s unearthly light |
| To him is welcome as the sight |
| Of sky and stars to prisoned men; |
| Thy grasp is welcome as the hand |
| Of brother in a foreign land; |
| Thy summons welcome as the cry |
| That told the Indian isles were nigh |
| To the world-seeking Genoese, |
| When the land wind, from woods of palm, |
| And orange-groves, and fields of balm, |
| Blew o’er the Haytian seas. |
| |
| Bozzaris! with the storied brave |
| Greece nurtured in her glory’s time, |
| Rest thee—there is no prouder grave, |
| Even in her own proud clime. |
| She wore no funeral-weeds for thee, |
| Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume |
| Like torn branch from death’s leafless tree |
| In sorrow’s pomp and pageantry, |
| The heartless luxury of the tomb; |
| But she remembers thee as one |
| Long loved and for a season gone; |
| For thee her poet’s lyre is wreathed, |
| Her marble wrought, her music breathed; |
| For thee she rings the birthday bells; |
| Of thee her babe’s first lisping tells; |
| For thine her evening prayer is said |
| At palace-couch and cottage-bed; |
| Her soldier, closing with the foe, |
| Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; |
| His plighted maiden, when she fears |
| For him the joy of her young years, |
| Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears; |
| And she, the mother of thy boys, |
| Though in her eye and faded cheek |
| Is read the grief she will not speak, |
| The memory of her buried joys, |
| And even she who gave thee birth, |
| Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, |
| Talk of thy doom without a sigh; |
| For thou art Freedom’s now, and Fame’s: |
| One of the few, the immortal names, |
| That were not born to die. |
| |
|
| |
| On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake |
| |
| |
| GREEN be the turf above thee, |
| Friend of my better days! |
| None knew thee but to love thee, |
| Nor named thee but to praise. |
| |
| Tears fell when thou wert dying, |
| From eyes unused to weep, |
| And long, where thou art lying, |
| Will tears the cold turf steep. |
| |
| When hearts, whose truth was proven, |
| Like thine, are laid in earth, |
| There should a wreath be woven |
| To tell the world their worth; |
| |
| And I who woke each morrow |
| To clasp thy hand in mine, |
| Who shared thy joy and sorrow, |
| Whose weal and woe were thine; |
| |
| It should be mine to braid it |
| Around thy faded brow, |
| But I ’ve in vain essayed it, |
| And feel I cannot now. |
| |
| While memory bids me weep thee, |
| Nor thoughts nor words are free,— |
| The grief is fixed too deeply |
| That mourns a man like thee. |
| |
|
| |
| COOPER, whose name is with his country’s woven, |
| First in her files, her PIONEER of mind— |
| A wanderer now in other climes, has proven |
| His love for the young land he left behind; |
| |
| And throned her in the senate-hall of nations, |
| Robed like the deluge rainbow, heaven-wrought; |
| Magnificent as his own mind’s creations, |
| And beautiful as its green world of thought: |
| |
| And, faithful to the Act of Congress, quoted |
| As law authority, it passed nem. con., |
| He writes that we are, as ourselves have voted, |
| The most enlightened people ever known; |
| |
| That all our week is happy as a Sunday |
| In Paris, full of song, and dance, and laugh; |
| And that, from Orleans to the Bay of Fundy, |
| There ’s not a bailiff or an epitaph; |
| |
| And furthermore—in fifty years, or sooner, |
| We shall export our poetry and wine; |
| And our brave fleet, eight frigates and a schooner, |
| Will sweep the seas from Zembla to the Line. |
| |
| If he were with me, King of Tuscarora! |
| Gazing, as I, upon thy portrait now, |
| In all its medalled, fringed, and beaded glory, |
| Its eye’s dark beauty, and its thoughtful brow— |
| |
| Its brow, half martial and half diplomatic, |
| Its eye upsoaring like an eagle’s wings— |
| Well might he boast that we, the Democratic, |
| Outrival Europe, even in our kings! |
| |
| For thou wast monarch born. Tradition’s pages |
| Tell not the planting of thy parent tree, |
| But that the forest tribes have bent for ages |
| To thee, and to thy sires, the subject knee. |
| |
| Thy name is princely—if no poet’s magic |
| Could make RED JACKET grace an English rhyme, |
| Though some one with a genius for the tragic |
| Hath introduced it in a pantomime— |
| |
| Yet it is music in the language spoken |
| Of thine ownland, and on her herald-roll; |
| As bravely fought for, and as proud a token |
| As Cœur de Lion’s of a warrior’s soul. |
| |
| Thy garb—though Austria’s bosom-star would frighten |
| That medal pale, as diamonds the dark mine, |
| And George the Fourth wore, at his court at Brighton, |
| A more becoming evening dress than thine; |
| |
| Yet ’t is a brave one, scorning wind and weather |
| And fitted for thy couch, on field and flood, |
| As Rob Roy’s tartan for the Highland heather, |
| Or forest green for England’s Robin Hood. |
| |
| Is strength a monarch’s merit, like a whaler’s? |
| Thou art as tall, as sinewy, and as strong |
| As earth’s first kings—the Argo’s gallant sailors, |
| Heroes in history and gods in song. |
| |
| Is beauty?—Thine has with thy youth departed; |
| But the love-legends of thy manhood’s years, |
| And she who perished, young and broken-hearted, |
| Are—but I rhyme for smiles and not for tears. |
| |
| Is eloquence?—Her spell is thine that reaches |
| The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport; |
| And there ’s one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches, |
| The secret of their mastery—they are short. |
| |
| The monarch mind, the mystery of commanding, |
| The birth-hour gift, the art Napoleon, |
| Of winning, fettering, moulding, wielding, banding |
| The hearts of millions till they move as one: |
| |
| Thou hast it. At thy bidding men have crowded |
| The road to death as to a festival; |
| And minstrels, at their sepulchres, have shrouded |
| With banner-folds of glory the dark pall. |
| |
| Who will believe? Not I—for in deceiving |
| Lies the dear charm of life’s delightful dream; |
| I cannot spare the luxury of believing |
| That all things beautiful are what they seem; |
| |
| Who will believe that, with a smile whose blessing |
| Would, like the Patriarch’s, soothe a dying hour, |
| With voice as low, as gentle, and caressing, |
| As e’er won maiden’s lip in moonlit bower; |
| |
| With look like patient Job’s eschewing evil; |
| With motions graceful as a bird’s in air; |
| Thou art, in sober truth, the veriest devil |
| That e’er clinched fingers in a captive’s hair! |
| |
| That in thy breast there springs a poison fountain |
| Deadlier than that where bathes the Upas-tree; |
| And in thy wrath a nursing cat-o’-mountain |
| Is calm as her babe’s sleep compared with thee! |
| |
| And underneath that face, like summer ocean’s, |
| Its lip as moveless, and its cheek as clear, |
| Slumbers a whirlwind of the heart’s emotions, |
| Love, hatred, pride, hope, sorrow—all save fear. |
| |
| Love—for thy land, as if she were thy daughter, |
| Her pipe in peace, her tomahawk in wars; |
| Hatred—of missionaries and cold water; |
| Pride—in thy rifle-trophies and thy scars; |
| |
| Hope—that thy wrongs may be by the Great Spirit |
| Remembered and revenged when thou art gone; |
| Sorrow—that none are left thee to inherit |
| Thy name, thy fame, thy passions, and thy throne! |
| |
| BACK | TOC | FORWARD
|
|