Seated at gallant Hotspur's side,
His Katharine was a happy bride,

A thousand years ago.

"Gaze on the abbey's ruined pile;

Does not the succoring Ivy, keeping
Her watch around it seem to smile,
As o'er a loved one sleeping.
One solitary turret grey

Still tells, in melancholy glory,
The legend of the Cheviot day,

The Percy's proudest border story.

"That day its roof was triumph's arch;
Then rang from aisle to pictured dome
The light step of the soldier's march,

The music of the trump and drum.
And babe and sire, the old and young,
And the manly hymn and minstrel's song,
And woman's pure kiss, sweet and long,
Welcomed her warrior home.

After two or three more stanzas, written in the same spirit, the jeering fiend comes over Mr. Halleck, and he breaks off thus:

"I wandered through the lofty halls,

Trod by the Percies of old fame,
And traced upon the chapel's walls

Each high, heroic name.

From him who once his standard set,

Where now o'er mosque or minaret

Glitter the Sultan's crescent moons,

To him who when a younger son

Fought for King George at Lexington,

A major of dragoons!"

Was the temptation of rhyming "dragoons" to moons too strong for the poet, or did his American indignation, to find a Percy against the cause of freedom, in the old war, dissipate the chivalric vision?

When we read this for the first time, we were under the momentary impression that we had got hold of, by mistake, "The Rejected Addresses," so like a parody on Sir Walter Scott did the verses sound:

To proceed, however, with Mr. Halleck's own account of the matter, he says:

"The last half stanza: it has dashed

From my warm lips the sparkling cup,
The light that o'er my eye-beam flashed,
The power that bore my spirit up,
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 Wooller, Morpeth, Hexam, and
Newcastle upon Tyne."

The poet concludes this address to the Home of the Percies:

"You'll ask if yet the Percy lives

In the armed pomp of feudal state?
The present representatives

Of Hotspur and the 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 the court, bower, hall,
From donjon-keep to turret wall,

For ten and six pence sterling."

As a proof of the fire with which Halleck treats a congenial theme, we quote some verses from his Marco Bozzaris. This brave warrior fell in an attack on the Turkish camp, during the Grecian war for independence, in 1823. The opening is full of spirit and beauty.

"At midnight in his guarded tent,

The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece her knee in suppliance bent
Should tremble at his power.

In dreams through camp and court he bore
The trophies of a conqueror.

In dreams his song of triumph heard;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring!
Then prest that monarch's throne-a king!
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,

As Eden's garden bird."

As a contrast to this supine security, the following stanza is artistically brought in. It introduces the hero with fine effect:

"At midnight, in the forest shades,

Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,

True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.

There had the Persian's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drank their blood
On old Platea's day :

And now they breathed that haunted air,
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arm to strike, and soul to dare,
As quick, as far as they.

"An hour past on: the Turk awoke,
That bright dream was his last.

He woke to hear his sentries shriek,

To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!'

He woke to die midst flame and smoke,
And shot, and groan, and sabre stroke,
And death-shots falling thick and fast.
As lightnings from the mountain-cloud,
And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
Bozzaris cheer his band:

Strike! till the last armed foe expires;
Strike! for your altars and your fires;
Strike! for the green graves of your sires,
God, and your native land!

They fought, like brave men, long and well;
They filled the ground with Moslem slain;
They conquered-but Bozzaris fell,

Bleeding at every vein.

His few surviving comrades saw

His smile when rang their proud hurrah,

And the red field was won:

Then saw in death his eyelids close,
Calmly, as to a night's repose,

Like flowers at set of sun.

Bozzaris! with the storied brave,

Greece mustered in her glory's time, Rest thee; there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime.

She wore no funeral weeds for thee,

Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, Like torn branch from death's leafless tree, In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,

The heartless luxury of the tomb! But she remembers thee as one Long-loved and for a season gone.

For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed

Her marble wrought-her music breathed-
For thee she rings the birthday bells,
Of thee her babes first lisping tells ;
For thine her evening prayer is said,
At palace-couch and cottage-bed:
Her soldier, closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow.
Her plighted maiden when she fears
For him, the joy of her young, years,
Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears.

And she the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,

The memory of her hundred joys,