"I've brought thee back thy banner, wench, from as rude and red a fray,

As e'er was proof of soldier's thew, or theme for minstrel's lay!

Here, Hubert, bring the silver bowl, and liquor quantum

suff.

I'll make a shift to drain it yet, ere I part with boots and buff;

Though Guy through many a gaping wound is breathing forth his life,

And I come to thee a landless man, my fond and faithful wife!

"Sweet! we will fill our money-bags, and freight a ship for France,

And mourn in merry Paris for this poor land's mischance:

For if the worst befall me, why better axe and rope, Than life with Lenthal for a king, and Peters for a pope! Alas! alas! my gallant Guy!-curse on the crop-eared

boor,

Who sent me with my standard, on foot from Marston Moor!"

STANZAS,

WRITTEN UNDER A DRAWING OF KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL,

CAMBRIDGE.

EXTRACTED FROM AN ALBUM IN DEVONSHIRE.

Most beautiful!—I gaze and gaze
In silence on the glorious pile;
And the glad thoughts of other days.
Come thronging back the while.
To me dim Memory makes more dear
The perfect grandeur of the shrine;
But if I stood a stranger here,

The ground were still divine.

Some awe the good and wise have felt,
As reverently their feet have trod
On any spot where man hath knelt,
To commune with his God;
By haunted spring, or fairy well,
Beneath the ruined convent's gloom,
Beside the feeble hermit's cell,

Or the false prophet's tomb.

But when was high devotion graced

With lovelier dwelling, loftier throne, Than thus the limner's art hath traced

From the time-honored stone?

The spirit here of worship seems

To hold the heart in wondrous thrall, And heavenward hopes and holy dreams, Came at her voiceless call;

At midnight, when the lonely moon
Looks from a vapor's silvery fold;
Or morning, when the sun of June
Crests the high towers with gold;
For every change of hour and form

Makes that fair scene more deeply fair; And dusk and day-break, calm and storm, Are all religion there.

TWENTY-EIGHT AND TWENTY-NINE.

I HEARD a sick man's dying sigh,

And an infant's idle laughter,

The Old Year went with mourning by—

The New came dancing after!

Let Sorrow shed her lonely tear,
Let Revelry hold her ladle;

Bring boughs of cypress for the bier,

Fling roses on the cradle

e;

Mutes to wait on the funeral state;

Pages to pour the wine;

A requiem for Twenty-Eight,

And a health to Twenty-Nine!

Alas for human happiness!

Alas for human sorrow!

Our yesterday is nothingness,

What else will be our morrow?

Still Beauty must be stealing hearts,

And Knavery stealing purses;
Still cooks must live by making tarts,
And wits by making verses;

While sages prate and courts debate,

The same stars set and shine;

And the world as it rolled through Twenty-Eight,

Must roll through Twenty-Nine.

Some King will come, in Heaven's good time,

To the tomb his father came to;

Some Thief will wade through blood and crime
To a crown he has no claim to;
Some suffering land will rend in twain

The manacles that bound her;

And gather the links of the broken chain
To fasten them proudly round her;
The grand and great will love and hate,
And combat and combine ;

And much where we were in Twenty-Eight,
We shall be in Twenty-Nine.

O'Connell will toil to raise the Rent,
And Kenyon to sink the Nation;
And Shiel will abuse the Parliament,
And Peel the Association;

And thought of bayonets and swords
Will make ex-Chancellors merry;

And jokes will be cut in the House of Lords,
And throats in the County of Kėrry;

And writers of weight will speculate
On the Cabinet's design;

And just what it did in Twenty-Eight
It will do in Twenty-Nine.