Till broad and fierce the star came forth On Ely's stately fane, And tower and hamlet rose in arms O'er all the boundless plain, The sign to Lincoln sent, And Lincoln sped the message on Till Skiddaw saw the fire that burned And the red glare on Skiddaw roused The burghers of Carlisle ! Lord Macaulay. Pontefract (Pomfret). KING RICHARD IN THE DUNGEON OF POMFRET CASTLE. I HAVE been studying how to compare This prison, where live, unto the world; My brain I'll prove the female to my soul; For no thought is contented. The better sort – As thoughts of things divine are intermixed With scruples, and do set the Word itself Against the Word: as thus, Come, little ones; then again, It is as hard to come, as for a camel To thread the postern of a small needle's eye. Thus play I, in one person, many people, And straight am nothing. But, whate'er I am, Not I, nor any man that but man is, With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased With being nothing. — Music do I hear? Ha, ha! keep time. How sour sweet music is, And here have I the daintiness of ear Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. William Shakespeare. Porlock. PORLOCK. PORLOCK! thy verdant vale so fair to sight, Thy lofty hills which fern and furze imbrown, The waters that roll musically down Thy woody glens, the traveller with delight Here by the unwelcome summer rain confined; How here, a patient prisoner, 't was my lot Dull rhymes to pass the duller hours away. Robert Souther SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF E. S. WRITTEN AT WORTHY FARM, NEAR PORLOCK, SOMERSET. THIS side the brow of yon sea-bounding hill TH There is an alley overarched with green, Where thick-grown briers entwine themselves at will; There, twinkling through the under-flowers, is seen The ever-shaking ocean far below; And on the upper side, a rocky wall Where deepest mosses and lithe ivies grow, The gloom came on which may not pass away. Henry Alford. Preston. FILIAL PIETY. ON THE WAYSIDE BETWEEN PRESTON AND LIVERPOOL. NTOUCHED through all severity of cold; UNTOU Inviolate, whate'er the cottage hearth Might need for comfort or for festal mirth; That pile of turf is half a century old: Yes, traveller! fifty winters have been told Since suddenly the dart of death went forth 'Gainst him who raised it, his last work on earth: Thence has it, with the son, so strong a hold Upon his father's memory, that his hands, Through reverence, touch it only to repair Its waste. Though crumbling with each breath of air, In annual renovation thus it stands, Rude mausoleum! but wrens nestle there, And redbreasts warble when sweet sounds are rare. William Wordsworth. |