And the rushing water soaks all, And the steward jumps up, and hastens For the necessary basins. Then the Greeks they groaned and quivered, A3 the warring waters doused them, Then all the fleas in Jewry And each man moaned and jabbered in His filthy Jewish gabardine, In woe and lamentation, And howling consternation. And the splashing water drenches Their dirty brats and wenches; And they crawl from bales and benches, In a hundred thousand stenches. This was the white squall famous, Who calmly stood and blew his And through the hubbub brought her, And when, its force expended, Came blushing o'er the sea, I thought, as day was breaking, A prayer at home for me. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. OUR BOAT TO THE WAVES. OUR boat to the waves go free, By the bending tide, where the curled wave breaks, Like the track of the wind on the white snow flakes: Away, away! "T is a path o'er the sea. Blasts may rave, - spread the sail, For our spirits can wrest the power from the wind, And the gray clouds yield to the sunny mind, Fear not we the whirl of the gale. WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. TO SEA! To sea! to sea! the calm is o'er, The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort, To sea! to sea! our white-winged bark Shall billowing cleave its watery way, And with its shadow, fleet and dark, Break the caved Triton's azure day, Rise ез moon or set of Itand man kiss of woman? Lay him low, lay him low, In the clover or the snow! Lay his_low: POEMS OF ADVENTURE AND RURAL SPORTS. CHEVY-CHASE. [Percy, Earl of Northumberland, had vowed to hunt for three days in the Scottish border, without condescending to ask leave from Earl Douglas, who was either lord of the soil or lord warden of the Marches. This provoked the conflict which was celebrated in the old ballad of the "Hunting o' the Cheviot." The circumstances of the battle of Otterbourne (A. D. 1398) are woven into the ballad, and the affairs of the two events are confounded. The bal lad preserved in the Percy Reliques is probably as old as 1574. The one following is a modernized form, of the time of James I.] GOD prosper long our noble king, A woful hunting once there did Then, having dined, the drovers went The bowmen mustered on the hills, And all their rear, with special care, The hounds ran swiftly through the woods That with their cries the hills and dales Lord Percy to the quarry went, To view the slaughtered deer; "But if I thought he would not come, "Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come, - "All men of pleasant Teviotdale, "And now with me, my countrymen, "That ever did on horseback come, But if my hap it were, I durst encounter man for man, Earl Douglas on his milk-white steed, Most like a baron bold, Rode foremost of his company, Whose armor shone like gold. |