Why dost thou slowly wind and sadly turn,

As loath to leave e'en this most joyless shore? Doth thy heart fail thee? do thy waters yearn For the far fields of memory once more?

Ah me! my soul, and thou art treacherous too,
Linked to this fatal flesh, a fettered thrall
The sin, the sorrow, why wouldst thou renew ?
The past, the perished, vain and idle all!

Away! behold at last the torrent leap,
Glad, glad to mingle with yon foamy brine;
Free and unmourned, the cataract cleaves the steep,—
O river of the rocks, thy fate is mine!

Robert Stephen Hawker.

L

Tilbury.

ELIZABETH AT TILBURY.

AUTUMN, 1588.

ET them come, come never so proudly
O'er the green waves in tall array;

Silver clarions menacing loudly,

High on deck of their gilded galleys

Our light sailers they scorn below:

We will scatter them, plague and shatter them,
Till their flag hauls down to the foe!

For our oath we swear

By the name we bear

By England's Queen and England free and fair, Hers ever and hers still, come life, come death: God save Elizabeth!

Sidonia, Recalde, and Leyva

Watch from their bulwarks in swarthy scorn: Lords and princes by Philip's favor: We by birthright are noble born! Freemen born of the blood of freemen, Sons of Cressy and Flodden are we: We shall sunder them, fire and plunder them, English boats on the English sea!

And our oath we swear

By the name we bear,

By England's Queen and England free and fair, Hers ever and hers still, come life, come death: God save Elizabeth!

Drake and Frobisher, Hawkins and Howard,
Raleigh, Cavendish, Cecil and Brooke,
Hang like wasps by the flagships towered,
Sting their way through the thrice-piled oak:
Let them range their seven-mile crescent,
Giant galleons, canvas wide!

Ours will harry them, board and carry them,
Plucking the plumes of the Spanish pride;
For our oath we swear

By the name we bear,

By England's Queen, and England free and fair,

Hers ever and hers still, come life, come death: God save Elizabeth!

Has God risen in wrath and scattered,
Have his tempests smote them in scorn?
Past the Orcades, dumb and tattered,
'Mong sea-beasts do they drift forlorn?
We were as lions hungry for battle;

God has made our battle his own!

God has scattered them, sunk and shattered them: Give the glory to him alone!

While our oath we swear

By the name we bear,

By England's Queen and England free and fair,→ Hers ever and hers still, come life, come death : God save Elizabeth!

Francis Turner Palgrave.

THE

Tintern Abbey.

TINTERN ABBEY.

HE men who called their passion piety,
And wrecked this noble argosy of faith,-

They little thought how beauteous could be death,
How fair the face of time's aye-deepening sea!
Nor arms that desolate, nor years that flee,
Nor hearts that fail, can utterly deflower
This grassy floor of sacramental power,

even we,

Where we now stand communicants, -
We of this latter, still protéstant age,
With priestly ministrations of the sun
And moon and multitudinous quire of stars,
Maintain this consecration, and assuage

With tender thoughts the past of weary wars,
Masking with good that ill which cannot be undone.

Lord Houghton.

Townstal.

TOWNSTAL CHURCH.

THE calm of eve is round thee now,
Old Townstal! with its floods of gold;

That shed a glory round thy brow,

Like that around the saints of old.
The purple shades beneath thee creep,
The cloudless sky shines overhead;
The river wanders calm and deep,
And hills of gold afar outspread.

O, let me pause awhile, and think:
Such soul-born feelings of repose
That to the past the present link

Steal o'er me as the daybeams close;
The heart-chords swelling send the while
Their sacred music through the soul,
As through thy old and hallowed aisle
The chant of praise is wont to roll.

O for a life of hours like this!

To cast aside the anxious fear

The struggle and the toil - for peace
Like this which reigns around me here;
To let the free soul soar away,

Like winds that o'er thy turret climb,
And bid the wandering fancy stray
Mid memories of olden time.

That olden time comes back once more,
The time when thy gray walls were young,
When hallowed feet first trod thy floor,
When midnight masses first were sung,
When erring souls with trembling sigh
First dropped the penitential tear,
And fervent prayers went up on high,
In mingled tones of hope and fear.

A silent awe is on my soul,

To think what vigils thou must keep,
When nightly stars above thee roll,
And all wide earth and ocean sleep;
Those countless stars, to whom is given
That inextinguishable glow

Which marks the truth of God in heaven,
As thou upon the earth below.

Thy sunlit tower is all so bright,
I do not care to gaze below,

Where sleep the dead in endless night,

Beneath the turf where daisies grow.