CCXXII. MONTENEGRO. THEY rose to where their sovran eagle sails, They kept their faith, their freedom on the height, Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd by day and night Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails, And red with blood the crescent reels from fight Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight By thousands down the crags and thro' the vales. O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Tsernogora! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm. Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers. Written on Hearing of the Outbreak of the Polish Insurrection. BLOW ye the trumpet, gather from afar The hosts to battle: be not bought and sold. Grew to his strength among his deserts cold; The growing murmurs of the Polish war! The Moslem myriads fell, and fled before— Than when Zamoysky smote the Tartar Khan ; Than earlier, when on the Baltic shore. Boleslas drove the Pomeranian. CCXXIV. A RECUSANT. THE Church stands there beyond the orchard-blooms; How yearningly I gaze upon its spire! Lifted mysterious through the twilight glooms, Dissolving in the sunset's golden fire, Or dim as slender incense morn by morn Ascending to the blue and open sky. For ever when my heart feels most forlorn R. A. THORPE. CCXXV. FORGETFULNESS. I ASK one boon of heaven; I have indeed, In others' hearts with mine a sympathy: One look into the west, where day dwells yet, Then turn me shivering to the cold night wind And dream of joys and loves that long have set: 'Tis for this sleepless viper of the mind I ask one boon of heaven-to forget. CCXXVI. TO A BIRD That Haunted the Waters of Laken, in the Winter. O MELANCHOLY bird!—a winter's day Thou standest by the margin of the pool, And taught by God dost thy whole being school To patience, which all evil can allay; God has appointed thee the fish thy prey: And given thyself a lesson to the fool Of time or gold, may yet amend his heart, And teach his soul by brooks and rivers fair: |