DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FROM "ENDYMION," BOOK 1. A THING of beauty is a joy forever: A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing MELROSE ABBEY. JOHN KEATS. FROM "THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL," CANTO II. IF thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright, When the broken arches are black in night, Spreading herbs and flowerets bright The youth in glittering squadrons start, And hurl the unexpected dart. He knew, by the streamers that shot so bright, That spirits were riding the northern light. By a steel-clenched postern door, They entered now the chancel tall; The darkened roof rose high aloof On pillars lofty and light and small; The keystone, that locked each ribbed aisle, Was a fleur-de-lys, or a quatre-feuille : The corbells were carved grotesque and grim; And the pillars, with clustered shafts so trim, With base and with capital flourished around, Seemed bundles of lances which garlands had bound. Full many a scutcheon and banner, riven, O gallant Chief of Otterburne ! And thine, dark Knight of Liddesdale ! O fading honors of the dead! O high ambition, lowly laid! The moon on the east oriel shone Thou wouldst have thought some fairy's hand 'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand In many a freakish knot had twined; Then framed a spell, when the work was done, And changed the willow wreaths to stone. The silver light, so pale and faint, Showed many a prophet, and many a saint, Whose image on the glass was dyed ; Full in the midst, his Cross of Red Triumphant Michael brandished, And trampled the Apostate's pride. The moonbeam kissed the holy pane, And threw on the pavement a bloody stain. SIR WALTER SCOTT. NORHAM CASTLE. FROM "MARMION," CANTO I. [The ruinous castle of Norham (anciently called Ubbanford) is situated on the southern bank of the Tweed, about six miles above Berwick, and where that river is still the boundary between Eng. land and Scotland. The extent of its ruins, as well as its historical importance, shows it to have been a place of magnificence as well as strength. Edward I. resided there when he was created umpire of the dispute concerning the Scottish succession. It was repeatedly taken and retaken during the wars between England and Scotland, and, indeed, scarce any happened in which it had not a principal share. Norham Castle is situated on a steep bank which overhangs the river. The ruins of the castle are at present considerable, as well as picturesque. They consist of a large shattered tower, with many vaults, and fragments of other edifices enclosed within an outward wall of great circuit.] DAY set on Norham's castled steep, The warriors on the turrets high, Seemed forms of giant height; St. George's banner, broad and gay, Less bright, and less, was flung; The scouts had parted on their search, The warder kept his guard; A distant trampling sound he hears; A horseman, darting from the crowd, His bugle-horn he blew ; The warder hasted from the wall, "Now broach ye a pipe of Malvoisie, Bring pasties of the doe, And quickly make the entrance free, And bid my heralds ready be, And every minstrel sound his glee, And all our trumpets blow; And, from the platform, spare ye not To fire a noble salvo-shot: Lord Marmion waits below." Then to the castle's lower ward Sped forty yeomen tall, The iron-studded gates unbarred, Raised the portcullis' ponderous guard, The lofty palisade unsparred, And let the drawbridge fall. Along the bridge Lord Marmion rode, His square-turned joints, and strength of limb, In camps a leader sage. Well was he armed from head to heel, Soared sable in an azure field: Behind him rode two gallant squires Four men-at-arms came at their backs, SIR WALTER SCOTT. Lovely in England's fadeless green, As silently and sweetly still While summer's wind blew soft and low, I wandered through the lofty halls From him who once his standard set Glitter the Sultan's crescent moons, That last half-stanza, it has dashed From my warm lip 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 dazzling to the dreaming boy; Has called "the era of good feeling ;" And leave off cattle-stealing: The Douglas in red herrings; The age of bargaining, said Burke, Sleep on, nor from your cerements start) 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 one, half groom, half seneschal, Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall, FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. SONNET. COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, LONDON, 1802. EARTH has not anything to show more fair; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. NUREMBERG. IN the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables like the rooks that round them throng: Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors rough and bold Had their dwellings in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, That their great, imperial city stretched its hand to every clime. In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band, Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand; On the square, the oriel window, where in old heroic days Sat the poet Melchior, singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise. Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of art; Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart; And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own. In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust, And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust: In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare, Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. Here, when art was still religion, with a simple | Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my reverent heart, dreamy eye Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, the Evan- Wave these mingling shapes and figures, like a gelist of Art; faded tapestry. Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee busy hand, the world's regard, Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs, Better Land. thy cobbler-bard. Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region where he lies, far away, Dead he is not - but departed for the artist As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in never dies: thought his careless lay; Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil, seems more fair That he once has trod its pavement, that he once The nobility of labor, the long pedigree of toil. has breathed its air. Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains; From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild, Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the Thine was a dangerous gift, the gift of beauty. mystic rhyme, And the smith his iron measures hammered to Inspiring awe in those who now enslave thee! the anvil's chime, Would thou hadst less, or wert as once thou wast, But why despair? Twice hast thou lived already, Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes As the sun shines among the lesser lights the flowers of poesy bloom In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom. Of heaven; and shalt again. The hour shall Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam The Sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, Puschman's song, Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea-weed As the old man gray and dovelike, with his Clings to the marble of her palaces. great beard white and long. No track of men, no footsteps to and fro, Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the mas- And gliding up her streets as in a dream, ter's antique chair. |