Above this bank-note world is gone;
And Alnwick's but a market-town,
And this, alas! its market-day,
And beasts and borderers throng the way;
Oxen and bleating lambs in lots,
Northumbrian boors and plaided Scots,
Men in the coal and cattle line;
From Teviot's bard and hero land,
From royal Berwick's beach of sand,
From Wooler, Morpeth, Hexham, and
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
These are not the romantic times
So beautiful in Spenser's rhymes,
So dazzling to the dreaming boy;
Ours are the days of fact, not fable,
Of knights, but not of the round table,
Of Baillie Jarvie, not Rob Roy;
"T is what "Our President" Monroe
Has called "the era of good feeling";
The Highlander, the bitterest foe
To modern laws, has felt their blow,
Consented to be taxed, and vote,
And put on pantaloons and coat,
And leave off cattle-stealing;
Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglass in red herrings;
And noble name and cultured land,
Palace and park and vassal band,
Are powerless to the notes of hand
Of Rothschild or the Barings.
The age of bargaining, said Burke,
Has come; to-day the turbaned Turk
(Sleep, Richard of the lion heart!
Sleep on, nor from your cerements start!)
Is England's friend and fast ally;
The Moslem tramples on the Greek,
And on the cross and altar-stone,
And Christendom looks tamely on,
And hears the Christian maiden shriek,
And sees the Christian father die;
And not a sabre-blow is given
For Greece and fame, for faith and heaven,
By Europe's craven chivalry.
You'll ask if yet the Percy lives
In the armed pomp of feudal state?
The present representatives
Of Hotspur and his "gentle Kate
Are some half-dozen serving-men
In the drab coat of William Penn;
A chambermaid whose lip and eye,
And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling, Spoke nature's aristocracy;
And one, half groom, half seneschal,
Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall,
For ten-and-sixpence sterling.
NEEDLES HOTEL, ALUM BAY, ISLE OF
OW simple in their grandeur are the forms
That constitute this picture! Nature grants
Scarce more than sternest cynic might desire,
Earth, sea, and sky, and hardly lends to each
Variety of color; yet the soul
Asks nothing fairer than the scene it grasps
And makes its own forever! From the gate
Of this home-featured Inn, which nestling cleaves
To its own shelf among the downs, begirt
With trees which lift no branches to defy
The fury of the storm, but crouch in love
Round the low snow-white walls whence they receive
More shelter than they lend, the heart-soothed guest
Views a furze-dotted common, on each side
Wreathed into waving eminences, clothed
Above the furze with scanty green, in front
Indented sharply to admit the sea,
Spread thence in softest blue, to which a gorge
Sinking within the valley's deepening green
Invites by grassy path; the Eastern down
Swelling with pride into the waters, shows
Its sward-tipped precipice of radiant white,
And claims the dazzling peak beneath its brow
Part of its ancient bulk, which hints the strength
Of those famed pinnacles that still withstand
The conquering waves, as fortresses maintained
By death-devoted troops, hold out awhile
After the game of war is lost, to prove
The virtue of the conquered. Here are scarce
Four colors for the painter; yet the charm
Which permanence, mid worldly change, confers,
Is felt, if ever, here; for he who loves
To bid this scene refresh his inward eye
When far away, may feel it keeping still
The very aspect that it wore for him,
Scarce changed by Time or Season: Autumn finds
Scant boughs on which the lustre of decay
May tremble fondly; Storms may rage in vain
Above the clumps of sturdy furze, which stand
The Forest of the Fairies; Twilight gray
Finds in the landscape's stern and simple forms
Naught to conceal; the Moon, although she cast
Upon the element she sways a track
Like that which slanted through young Jacob's sleep
From heaven to earth, and fluttered at the soul
Of Shadow's mighty Painter, who thence drew
Hints of a glory beyond shape, reveals
The clear-cut framework of the sea and downs
Shelving to gloom, as unperplexed with threads
Of pallid light, as when the summer's noon
Bathes them in sunshine; and the giant cliffs
Scarce veiling more their lines of flint that run
Like veins of moveless blue through their bleak sides,
In moonlight than in day, shall tower as now
(Save when some moss's slender stain shall break
Into the samphire's yellow in mid-air,
To tempt some trembling life), until the eyes Which gaze in childhood on them shall be dim.
Yet deem not that these sober forms are all
That Nature here provides, although she frames
These in one lasting picture for the heart.
Within the foldings of the coast she breathes
Hues of fantastic beauty. Thread the gorge,
And, turning on the beach, while the low sea,
Spread out in mirrored gentleness, allows
A path along the curving edge, behold
Such dazzling glory of prismatic tints
Flung o'er the lofty crescent, as assures
The orient gardens where Aladdin plucked
Jewels for fruit no fable, as if earth,
Provoked to emulate the rainbow's gauds
In lasting mould, had snatched its floating hues
And fixed them here; for never o'er the bay
Flew a celestial arch of brighter grace
Than the gay coast exhibits; here the cliff
Flaunts in a brighter yellow than the stream
Of Tiber wafted; then with softer shades
Declines to pearly white, which blushes soon
With pink as delicate as Autumn's rose
Wears on its scattering leaves; anon the shore
Recedes into a fane-like dell, where stained
With black, as if with sable tapestry hung,
Light pinnacles rise taper; further yet
Swells out in solemn mass a dusky veil
Of purple crimson, while bright streaks of red
Start out in gleam-like tint, to tell of veins
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