ALNWICK CASTLE." H JOME of the Percy's high-born race, Home of their beautiful and brave, Alike their birth and burial-place, Their cradle and their grave! A gentle hill its side inclines, Lovely in England's fadeless green, To meet the quiet stream which winds Through this romantic scene As silently and sweetly still, As when, at evening, on that hill, While summer's wind blew soft and low, Seated by gallant Hotspur's side, His Katherine was a happy bride, A thousand years ago. ALNWICK CASTLE. Gaze on the Abbey's ruined pile: Does not the succoring ivy, keeping Her watch around it, seem to smile, As o'er a loved one sleeping? 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; 19 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, Of beings born and buried here; Tales of the bridal and the bier, The welcome and farewell, Since on their boughs the startled bird I wandered through the lofty halls 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, That last half stanza-it has dashed From my warm lip the sparkling cup; ALNWICK CASTLE. 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, These are not the romantic times 66 'Tis what our President," Monroe, Has called "the era of good feeling: " And put on pantaloons and coat, Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt, Of Rothschild or the Barings. 21 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? The present representatives Of Hotspur and his "gentle Kate," 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. |