In vain I sprung, like rushing flame,
On him who struck the blow;
1 fell, while calling on his name,
Beneath a meaner foe;

Yet vengeance dogs the Zegri lord-
My father's life-blood warm'd his sword;
Yes-like the wave thro' bursting banks,
To dash upon the Zegri ranks,

To win revenge in death;

To wrench the truncheon from his hand (My father's spirit guide my brand),

And drink his parting breath,

Are all that now remain to me,
Except the thrilling thought of thee.
It was not, love, to see thy tears
I left the warrior throng;
It was not, love, from selfish fears
That I disturb'd thy song;

But that I could not couch my spear
With death prophetic on mine ear,
Without one look from thee,

Or think that when the Zegri's glaive
Had sent me to an early grave,

When heaps above my corse lay pil'd,
Unconscious Clara might have smil❜d,
Without a thought for me.

Farewell! this rose from Clara's hair,
To grace her own true knight,
Shall flourish whilst the bravest bear
The thunder of the fight.

All that I ask is Clara's tear

To deck her Roland's early bier:

I may not hope to quit the field,

Unless borne back upon my shield."

'Tis morn: the sun is rising fair;
He knows not what shall greet him there.
The Moor is on his way;

The Spanish chiefs, resolv'd to die,
Steadily watch Gonsalvo's eye,

In their sublime array.

The Abencerrage chiefs advance;
Each warrior waves aloft his lance ;*
Each snow-white courser waits the word,t
Proudly submissive to his lord.

The fetter'd lion shakes his mane,

And laughs to scorn the futile chain :
Despite that chain upon their shield
The Abencerrages never yield.
Each tameless Zegri draws a sword,‡
Less fierce and harden'd than its lord;

For while in front, the snow-white throng

Exulting bore their lords along,

Those coal black steeds were fleck'd with foam,

In fierce rebellion to their doom:

There, too, from every shackle freed,
The wild Numidian urged his steed,
And well repaid that courser brave,
The confidence his master gave,
As he sprung past with flashing eye,

And knowledge of his liberty.

The squares are form'd, and murmurs rise

Of fierce impatience to the skies;

* The Eastern nations did not couch their spears.

+ The Abencerrages, a Moorish tribe, who always rode white horses, the chained lion their device.

The Zegri is another tribe infamous for ferocity, who rode

black horses.

The trumpet sounds and on the blast are borne
The savage echoings of the Moorish horn.

Each warrior held his breath,

For a moment, and no more;
Then on they dash'd to death,
Like billows to the shore;
While the free plumage of the brave,
Floated like foam upon the wave.
Then, as the sabre left the sheath;
Then, as the firm earth shook beneath
The rush of human wrath;

Then, as the voice of battle spoke,
The war-song of Castile awoke,

And peal'd in thunder forth.

Oh, who can tell, the pride of conscious might
The fierce ebriety of war's delight;

And amid the crash of shivering spears,

The hot blood's maddening flow,

It were worth the life of a thousand years,
To be first for a moment now.

[To be continued.]

MALEK.

THE MISERIES OF GODFATHERS.

I almost invariably happens, that men, with wives and small families of thirteen children, have attempted to cry down the situation of a bachelor. They say that he wants the comforts of his cheerful fire-side, his homely fare, his smiling wife, and children climbing up the knees of their sire, and so forth; but it always appeared to me, that they never

had been able to hit upon the true cause of the bachelor's misery; for the touchstone of his misfortunes is the certainty of being solicited to become a Godfather. Every unmarried man is sure to have a regiment of Godchildren, and it is this, and this alone, which drives so many men, at the sober age of fifty, to the altar of Hymen, and the arms of a cook-maid. Dr. Johnson, in his spirited poem, “The Vanity of Human Wishes," says,

"The teeming mother, anxious for her race,
Begs for each birth the fortune of a

,,

not face (for every child is like its mother, and every mother handsome, in her own opinion; the child, therefore, has that accomplishment already), but Godfather. Accordingly, every good-natured man, who is unmarried, is pressed to stand Godfather to some squalling infant. I lately called on a bachelor, and not finding him at home, I amused myself, till his return, by prying about the room, when I chanced to light on a manuscript, which I now present to the public, as the genuine diary of a Godfather:

"(Ten o'clock.) A Godson called on me, previously to his going to school. Knew his tricks, and determined to punish him. Slipped a shilling

into his hand, and said, 'Here, my boy, here's a sovereign for you.' He looked like a child on a washing-day, but I would not observe his blue looks, or discover my mistake.

"(Eleven o'clock.) Four letters, in envelopes (double postage), requesting me to take long

journeys to christenings.

"(Twelve o'clock.) A few two-penny post letters, with wafers, appointing christenings.-N. B. Two on the same day, and at the same hour. I cannot, not being a crowned head, be sponsor by proxy to a child whom I never saw, and whose parents I never heard of.

66

(One o'clock.) Went out for a walk, and met crowds of my little protegés. Their little fingers dirtied my hands, and thereby prevented me from calling on a certain lady of delicate nerves, and exquisite sensibility.

"(Two o'clock.) Attended a christening.-N. B. A truant nail in the corner of the stool tore my pantaloons.

"(Three o'clock.) Ditto. In my hurry to go from one church to another, my hackney-coach knocked down an old man, who dying of age a week afterwards, the parish officers made me pay five pounds for his funeral obsequies.

"(Six o'clock). Dinner-forced to say that I saw the light of genius in the eye of a Godson who squinted. Heard from another Godson a long account of an usher at his school, and from another, that William the Third was surnamed the Conqueror, and Blue Beard meant Henry the Eighth. My little Godchildren, one and all, made rude remarks,