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On come her gallant mariners!

What now avail Rome's boasted charms?

Where are the Spaniard's vaunts of eager wrath? His hopes of conquest now?

And hark! the angry winds arise,

Old Ocean heaves his angry waves;

The winds and waves against the invaders fight,
To guard the sea-girt land.

Howling around his palace-towers,
The Spanish despot hears the storm;
He thinks upon his navies far away,
And boding doubts arise.

Long over Biscay's boisterous surge,
The watchman's aching eye shall strain;
Long shall he gaze, but never winged bark
Shall bear good tidings home.

SOUTHEY.

THE SURGEON'S TALE.

T'was on a dark December evening;
Loud the blast, and bitter cold;
Downward came the whirling waters,
Deep and black the river roll'd.
Not a dog beneath the tempest,
Not a beggar on his beat;

Wind and rain, and cold and darkness,
Swept through every desert street.

Muffled to the teeth that evening,
I was struggling in the storm,
Through pestilent lanes and hungry alleys;
Suddenly,—an ancient form

Peer'd from out a gloomy doorway,

And with trembling croak it said,—

"In the left-hand empty garret

"You will find a woman dead.

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"Never stepped a finer creature,
“When she was a simple maid;
But she did, like many others,
“Loved a man and was betrayed.
"I have seen her in her carriage,

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Diamonds flaming in her hair;

"And I've seen her starving (starving"Do you hear?) and now she's there."

Up the worn and slippery stair

With a quicken'd pulse I sprung;
Famine, Filth, and mean Despair,
Round about the darkness hung;
No kind vision met my glances;
Friend or helper of the poor;
So the crazy room I entered

And look'd down upon the floor.

There on the rough and naked boards,
A long, gaunt, wasted figure lay,
Murder'd in its youth by hunger;
And all its beauties wrinkled clay.
Life's poor wants had left her nothing;
Clothes nor fuel-food nor bed:
Nothing-save some ragged letters,
Whereon lay the ghastly head.

"Nothing!"-yet what more could Pity Crave for one about to die,

Than sweet words from one she worshipped, (Sweet! tho' every word a lie

In the morning of her pleasure,
In the midnight of her pain,

;

They were all her wealth, her comfort-
Treasured-aye! and not in vain.

And with her they now lie mouldering;
And a tale upon a stone

Telleth where (to end the story),
Love's poor outcast lies alone.

Mourn not for at length she sleepeth

The soft slumber of the dead;
Resting on her loved love-letters,
Last fit pillow for her head.

BARRY CORNWALL.

WILLIAM TELL'S SPEECH.

YE crags and peaks, I'm with you once again!

you

I hold to the hands
you
first beheld,
To show they still are free. Methinks I hear
A spirit in your echoes answer me,

And bid your tenant welcome to his home
Again! O sacred forms, how proud you look!
How high you lift your heads into the sky!
How huge you are! how mighty, and how free!
Ye are the things that tower, that shine-whose smile
Makes glad, whose frown is terrible; whose forms,
Robed, or unrobed, do all the impress wear

Of awe divine! Ye guards of liberty,
I'm with you once again! I call to you
With all my voice! I hold my hands to you,
To show they still are free. I rush to you
As though I could embrace!

Scaling yonder peak,

I saw an eagle wheeling near its brow,
O'er the abyss. His broad expanded wings
Lay calm and motionless upon the air,
As if he floated there without their aid,
By the sole act of his unlorded will,
That buoyed him proudly up! Instinctively
I bent my bow; yet kept he rounding still
His aëry circle, as in the delight

Of measuring the ample range beneath;
And round about, absorbed, he heeded not

The death that threatened him! I couldn't shoot!
'Twas liberty! I turn'd my bow aside

And let him soar away.

When I wedded thee,

The land was free! O with what pride I used
To walk these hills, and look up to my God,
And bless him that it was so! It was free!
From end to end, from cliff to lake, 'twas free!-
Free as our torrents are, that leap our rocks,
And plough our valleys without asking leave;
Or as our peaks, that wear their caps of snow
In very presence of the regal sun!

How happy was I in it then! I loved

Its very storms! Yes, Emma, I have sat

In my boat, at night, when down the mountain gorge
The wind came roaring-sat in it, and eyed
The thunder breaking from his cloud, and smiled
To see him shake his lightnings o'er my head,
And think I had no master, save his own!
You know the jutting cliff, round which a track
Up hither winds, whose base is but the brow
To such another one? O'ertaken there
By the mountain-blast, I've laid me flat along;
And while gust followed gust more furiously,
As if 'twould sweep me o'er the horrid brink,
And I have thought of other lands, whose storms
Are summer-flaws to those of mine, and just
Have wished me there.
Has checked that wish;

The thought that mine was free
and I have raised my head,

And cried, in thraldom, to that furious wind,
Blow on!-This is the land of liberty!"

66

SHERIDAN KNOWLES.

SELECTIONS IN PROSE.

ANCIENT ORATORY.

C. MARIUS TO THE ROMANS,

ON THEIR HESITATING TO APPOINT HIM GENERAL IN THE EXPEDITION AGAINST JUGURTHA, MERELY ON ACCOUNT OF HIS EXTRACTION.

IT is but too common, my countrymen, to observe a material difference between the behaviour of those who stand candidates for places of power and trust, before and after their obtaining them. They solicit them in one manner and execute them in another. They set out with a great appearance of activity, humility, and moderation; and they quickly fall into sloth, pride, and avarice. It is undoubtedly, no easy matter to discharge, to the general satisfaction, the duty of a supreme commander in troublesome times. I am, I hope, duly sensible of the importance of the office I propose to take upon me, for the service of my country. To carry on, with effect, an expensive war, and yet be frugal of the public money-to oblige those to serve, whom it may be delicate to offend— to conduct, at the same time, a complicated variety of operations to concert measures at home answerable to the state of things abroad-and to gain every valuable end, in spite of opposition from the envious, the factious, and the disaffected-to do all this, my countrymen, is more difficult than is generally thought. And, beside the disadvantages which are common to me, with all others, in eminent stations, my case is, in this respect, peculiarly hard; that, whereas a commander of patrician rank, if he is guilty of a neglect, or breach of duty, has his great connexions-the antiquity of his family-the important services of his ancestors-and the multitudes he has by power engaged in his interest-to screen him from condign punishment; my whole safety depends upon myself, which renders it the more indispensably necessary for me

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