ALNWICK CASTLE.

163

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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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 our President," Monro,

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.

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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.

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.

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."