That spoil'd your summer-fields and fruitful vines, Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough In your embowell'd bosoms, this foul swine

Lies now even in the centre of this isle,

Near to the town of Leicester, as we learn.
From Tamworth thither is but one day's march;
In God's name, cheerly on, courageous friends,
To reap the harvest of perpetual peace
By this one bloody trial of sharp war.

Oxr. Every man's conscience is a thousand men, To fight against that guilty homicide.

HERB. I doubt not but his friends will turn to us. BLUNT. He hath no friends but who are friends for fear;

Which, in his dearest need, will fly from him.

RICHM. All for our vantage: then, in God's name,

march.

True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings, Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings. William Shakespeare.

THEY

Taunton.

FOR A MONUMENT AT TAUNTON.

HEY suffered here whom Jeffreys doomed to death
In mockery of all justice, when the judge

Unjust, subservient to a cruel king,

Performed his work of blood. They suffered here,
The victims of that judge and of that king;

In mockery of all justice, here they bled,
Unheard. But not unpitied, nor of God
Unseen, the innocent suffered; not unheard
The innocent blood cried vengeance; for at length
The indignant nation in its power arose,
Resistless. Then that wicked judge took flight,
Disguised in vain: not always is the Lord
Slow to revenge. A miserable man,
He fell beneath the people's rage, and still
The children curse his memory. From the throne
The obdurate bigot who commissioned him,
Inhuman James, was driven. He lived to drag
Long years of frustrate hope; he lived to load
More blood upon his soul. Let tell the Boyne,
Let Londonderry tell, his guilt and shame;
And that immortal day when on thy shores,
La Hogue, the purple ocean dashed the dead!

Robert Southey.

SWEET

TAUNTON DENE.

YWEET Taunton Dene! thy smiling fields
Once more with merry accents ring;

Once more reviving Nature yields
Her tribute to the smiling spring.
The small birds in the woodland sing,
The ploughman turns the kindly green,

And Pleasure waves her resistless wing
Among thy groves, sweet Taunton Dene.

But peace abides with Him alone

Who rules with calm, resistless power;

Through all creation's boundless zone,
From rolling sphere to garden flower.
Nor falls in spring the welcome shower
Unwilled of Him, nor tempest blows,

Nor wind within the fragrant bower
Can rend a leaf from summer rose.

Sweet Taunton Dene! O, long abide
In thy fair vale delights like these!
And long may Tone's smooth waters glide
By smiling cots and hearts at ease!
Be thine the joy of rustic peace,

Each sound that haunts the woodland scene;
And blithe beneath thy bowering trees
The dance at eve, Sweet Taunton Dene!

Tavy, the River.

THE TAVY.

Gerald Griffin

A LITTLE grove is seated on the marge

Of Tavy's streame, not over thicke nor large, Where every morn a quire of Silvans sung, And leaves to chatt'ring winds serv'd as a tongue, By whom the water runs in many a ring, As if it fain would stay to heare them sing, And on the top a thousand young birds flye, To be instructed in their harmony. Neere to the end of this all-joysome grove A dainty circled plot seem'd as it strove

To keepe all bryers and bushes from invading
Her pleasing compasse by their needlesse shading,
Since it was not so large but that the store

Of trees around could shade her breast and more.
In midst thereof a little swelling hill,
Gently disburd'ned of a christall rill

Which from the greenside of the flow'ry bancke
Eat downe a channell; here the wood-nymphs dranke,
And great Diana, having slaine the deere,

Did often use to come and bathe her here.

Here talk'd they of their chase, and where next day
They meant to hunt: here did the shepheards play,
And many a gaudy nymph was often seene
Imbracing shepheard's boyes upon this greene.
From hence the spring hasts downe to Tavy's brim,
And pays a tribute of his drops to him.

William Browne.

BUT

Thames, the River.

THE THAMES.

now this mighty flood, upon his voyage prest (That found how with his strength his beauties still increased,

From where brave Windsor stood on tiptoe to behold The fair and goodly Thames, so far as ere he could, With kingly houses crowned, of more than earthly pride, Upon his either banks, as he along doth glide)

With wonderful delight doth his long course pursue,

Where Oatlands, Hampton Court, and Richmond he doth view,

Then Westminster the next great Thames doth enter

tain;

That vaunts her palace large, and her most sumptuous

fane :

The land's tribunal seat that challengeth for hers,
The crowning of our kings, their famous sepulchres.
Then goes he on along by that more beauteous strand,
Expressing both the wealth and bravery of the land.
(So many sumptuous bowers within so little space
The all-beholding sun scarce sees in all his race.)
And on by London leads, which like a crescent lies,
Whose windows seem to mock the star-befreckled skies;
Besides her rising spires, so thick themselves that show,
As do the bristling reeds within his banks that grow.
There sees his crowded wharfs, and people-pestered

shores,

His bosom overspread with shoals of laboring oars: With that most costly bridge that doth him most re

nown,

By which he clearly puts all other rivers down.

PROTHALAMION.

Michael Drayton.

CALM

YALME was the day, and through the trembling ayre Sweete-breathing Zephyrus did softly play

A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay

Hot Titans beames, which then did glyster fayre;
When I, (whose sullein care,

Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay