66

"Of all my halls have nursed,

Page, squire, or groom, one cup to bring "Of blessed water from the spring,

"To slake my dying thirst ?"
O woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please
And variable as the shade

By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!

Scarce were the piteous accents said,
When, with the Baron's casque, the maid
To the nigh streamlet ran:

Forgot were hatred, wrongs, and fears;
The plaintive voice alone she hears,
Sees but the dying man.

She stooped her by the runnel's side,
She filled the helm, and backward hied.

Deep drank Lord Marmion of the wave;
And, as she stooped his brow to lave,

Is it the hand of Clare," he said,

"Or injured Constance, bathes my head?

I would the fiend, to whom belongs
"The vengeance due to all her wrongs,
Would spare me but a day!
"For, wasting fire, and dying groan,
"And priests slain on the altar-stone,
"Might bribe him for delay.

The war, that for a space did fail,
Now, trebly thundering, swelled the gale,
And, "Stanley!" was the cry.
A light on Marmion's visage spread,
And fired his glazing eye:

With dying hand above his head,

He shook the fragment of his blade,

And shouted, "Victory!"

Charge! Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!" Were the last words of Marmion.

SCOTT.

76

THE DOWNFALL OF POLAND.

O SACRED Truth! thy triumph ceased awhile,
And Hope, thy sister, ceased with thee to smile,
When leagued oppression poured to northern wars
Her whiskered pandours and her fierce hussars,
Waved her dread standard to the breeze of morn,
Pealed her loud drum, and twanged her trumpet horn;
Tumultuous horror brooded o'er her van,
Presaging wrath to Poland-and to man!

Warsaw's last champion from her height surveyed,
Wide o'er the fields, a waste of ruin laid :

66

O Heaven!" he cried, "my bleeding country save! Is there no hand on high to shield the brave?

"Yet, though destruction sweep those lovely plains, Rise, fellow-men, our country yet remains!

66

By that dread name, we wave the sword on high, "And swear for her to live-with her to die!"

He said, and on the rampart-heights arrayed
His trusty warriors, few, but undismayed;
Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form,
Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm;
Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly,
Revenge, or death"-the watch-word and reply;
Then pealed the notes, omnipotent to charm,
And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm.

In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few,
From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew :
O bloodiest picture in the book of time!
Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime:
Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,
Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her wo!

Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear,
Closed her bright eye, and curbed her high career;
Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell,
And Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell!

The sun went down, nor ceased the carnage there;
Tumultuous murder shook the midnight air:

On Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow,
His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below.
The storm prevails, the rampart yields a way,
Bursts the wild cry of horror and dismay!
Hark! as the smouldering piles with thunder fall,
A thousand shrieks for hopeless mercy call!
Earth shook-red meteors flashed along the sky,
And conscious Nature shuddered at the cry.

Oh! righteous Heaven; ere Freedom found a grave,
Why slept thy sword, omnipotent to save?
Where was thine arm, O Vengeance! where thy rod,
That smote the foes of Zion and of God;

That crushed proud Ammon, when his iron car
Was yoked in wrath, and thundered from afar?
Where was the storm that slumbered till the host
Of blood-stained Pharaoh left their trembling coast;
Then bade the deep in wild commotion flow,
And heaved an ocean on their march below?

Departed spirits of the mighty dead!

Ye that at Marathon and Leuctra bled!
Friends of the world, restore your swords to man;
Fight in his sacred cause, and lead the van:
Yet for Sarmatia's tears of blood atone,
And make her arm puissant as your own.
Oh! once again, to Freedom's cause return
The patriot Tell-the Bruce of Bannockburn!

CAMPBELL.

THE FALL OF CORINTH.

O'ER Corinth shines the glowing sun,

As if the morn were a jocund one;
Brightly breaks the night away,
To light the Moslem to the fray.
Hark! to the trump, and the drum,

And the neigh of the steed and the multitude's hum,
And the clash, and the shout, "They come! they come!"
The horse-tails are pluck'd from the ground, and the sword
From its sheath; and they form and but wait for the word.

Tartar, and Spahi, and Turcoman,

Strike your tents, and throng to the van;
Mount ye, spur ye, skirr the plain,

That the fugitive may flee in vain,

When he breaks from the town; and none escape,
Aged or young, in the Christian shape;

The steeds are all bridled, and snort to the rein;
Curved is each neck, and flowing each mane;
White is the foam of their champ on the bit;
The spears are uplifted; the matches are lit;
The cannon are pointed and ready to roar,
And crush the wall they have shaken before:
When the culverin's signal is fired, then on;
Leave not in Corinth a living one—

A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls,-
A hearth in her mansions, a stone on her walls.
God and the Prophet!-Alla Hu!

Up to the skies with that wild halloo !

There the breach lies for passage, the ladder to scale;

66 And your hands on your sabres, and how should ye fail? "He who plucks down the red cross may crave

"His heart's dearest wish; let him ask it, and have!" Thus uttered Coumourgi, the dauntless vizier ;

The reply was the brandish of sabre and spear,

And the shout of fierce thousands in joyous ire :-
Silence-hark to the signal-fire!

As the wolves that headlong go

On the stately buffalo,

Though with fiery eyes, and angry roar,

And hoofs that stamp and horns that gore,

He tramples on earth or tosses on high

The foremost, who rush on his strength but to die:
Thus against the wall they bent,

Thus the first were backward sent;

Many a bosom, sheathed in brass,
Strewed the earth like broken glass,
Shivered by the shot, that tore

The ground whereon they 'moved no more:
E'en as they fell, in files they lay,

Like the mower's grass at the close of day,
When his work is done on the levelled plain;
Such was the fall of the foremost train.

But

at length, outbreathed and worn, Corinth's sons were downward borne

By the long and oft renewed

Charge of the Moslem multitude.

In firmness they stood, and in masses they fell,
Heap'd by the host of the infidel;

Hand to hand, and foot to foot;

Nothing there, save death, was mute.
But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,
And all but the after carnage done.
Shriller shrieks now mingling come
From within the plunder'd dome :
Hark to the haste of flying feet,

That splash in the blood of the slippery street;
But here and there, where 'vantage ground
Against the foe may still be found,
Desperate groups, of twelve or ten,
Make a pause, and turn again—
With banded backs against the wall,
Fiercely stand, or fighting fall.
The turbaned host,

With adding ranks and raging boast,
Press onwards with such strength and heat
Their numbers baulk their own retreat;
For narrow the way that led to the spot
Where still the Christians yielded not;
And the foremost, if fearful, may vainly try
Through the massy column to turn and fly;
They perforce must do or die.

They die; but ere their eyes could close,
Avengers o'er their bodies rose;

Fresh and furious, fast they fill

The ranks unthinned, though slaughtered still;

And faint the weary Christians wax

Before the still renewed attacks:

And now the Othmans gain the gate;
Still resists its iron weight,

And still, all deadly aimed and hot,
From every crevice comes the shot;
From every shattered window pour
The volleys of the sulphurous shower;

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