T. B. MACAULAY.-PHILIP J. BAILEY.
A thousand knights are pressing close
Behind the snow-white crest;
And in they burst, and on they rushed,
While, like a guiding star,
Amidst the thickest carnage blazed
The helmet of Navarre.
Now, God be praised, the day is ours!
Mayenne hath turned his rein;
D'Aumale hath cried for quarter—
The Flemish count is slain.
Their ranks are breaking, like thin clouds
Before a Biscay gale;
The field is heaped with bleeding steeds,
And flags, and cloven mail;
And then we thought on vengeance,
And all along our van,
Remember St. Bartholomew,"
Was passed from man to man;
But out spake gentle Harry,
"No Frenchman is my foe:
Down, down with every foreigner;
But let your brethren go."
Oh! was there ever such a knight,
In friendship or in war,
As our sovereign lord, King Henry,
The soldier of Navarre!
'Twas night over earth like a pall was thrown
Thickest darkness. Blent with the thunder's tone
Were the torrent's rush, and the wind's wild moan,
And the wail of the ocean wave.
"Twas then that grim death, clad in terror and gloom,
Left his cheerless home in the dreary tomb,
To summon the old and the young to their doom,
In the land of the dreamless grave.
He lifted the latch of a cottage door,
Where a widowed mother is bending o'er-
With looks that the fulness of sorrow wore-
The child of her early love.
And meekly she bowed in the dying hour―
'Twas her Father's will that the fragile flower
Remove from the blight of an early bower
To the garden of God above.
Then away he flew with fiendish glee!
"I will visit the house of mirth," said he:
""Tis seldom they meet with a guest like me
In the blaze of the festive hall.”
The spectre brandished his blood-stained lance,
The revellers shrank from his withering glance,
And a blackened corse in the mazy dance,
Struck down was the "belle of the ball!"
In the banqueting hall of a castle old
Sat a stalwart warrior, grim and bold,
As rugged and gray as his own stronghold,
And the last of an ancient line.
The falcon eye of the stern old knight
Lit up with a wild unearthly light,
As he lifted on high the goblet bright
Brim-full of the purple wine.
He had scoffed at death on the blood-red plain,
'Mid the bristling steel and the leaden rain;
He had laughed to scorn, on the land and main,
The shell and the booming shot:
With the wine-cup now in his nervous grasp,
He is seized in the spectre's icy clasp ;
One groan of horror-a shudder-à gasp—
And the warrior chief is not.
Thus, the Angel of Death remorseless flings
The blighting shade of his leaden wings
O'er the cottage low and the domes of kings:
Over all he asserts his power.
Learn wisdom then: let your life attest
That death will not come an unwelcome guest:
Seek now the love that will make you blest
In the gloom of thy dying hour.
When the pulses of life beat faint and slow,
And the spirit is struggling, and pants to go,
The richest baubles that tempt below
But deepen the gathering gloom;
But light divine, with heavenly ray,
Will guide the soul on the radiant way
To the clime of the blest, forever and aye
To live in Eternity's bloom.
PHILIP J. BAILEY: (Festus.)
MANY a year hath passed away,
Many a dark and dismal
year,
Since last I roamed in the light of day,
Or mingled my own with another's tear:
Woe to the daughters and sons of men-
Woe to them all, when I roam again!
Here have I watched in this dungeon cell,
Longer than Memory's tongue can tell:
Here have I shrieked in my wild despair,
When the damnéd fiends from their prison came,
Sported and gambolled, and mocked me here,
With their eyes of fire, and their tongues of flame;
Shouting forever and aye my name!
And I strove in vain to burst my chain,
And longed to be free as the winds again,
That I might spring in the wizard ring,
And scatter them back to their hellish den !
Woe to the daughters and sons of men-
Woe to them all, when I roam again!
How long I have been in this dungeon here,
Little I know, and nothing I care:
What to me is the day or night,
Summer's heat or autumn sere,
Spring-tide flowers or winter's blight,
Pleasure's smile or sorrow's tear?
Time! what care I for thy flight?
Joy! I spurn thee with disdain:
Nothing love I but this clanking chain.
Once I broke from its iron hold:
Nothing I said, but silent and bold,
Like the shepherd that watches his gentle fold,
Like the tiger that crouches in mountain lair,
Hours upon hours, so watched I here;
Till one of the fiends that had come to bring
Herbs from the vailey, and drink from the spring,
Stalked through my dungeon entrance in!
Ha! how he shrieked to see me free!
Ho! how he trembled and knelt to me,
He who had mocked me many a day,
And barred me out from its cheerful ray!
Gods! how I shouted to see him pray!
I wreathed my hand in the demon's hair,
And choked his breath in its muttered prayer,
And danced I then in wild delight,
To see the trembling wretch's fright.
Gods! how I crushed his hated bones 'Gainst the jagged wall, and the dungeon-stones; And plunged my arm adown his throat,
And dragged to life his beating heart,
And held it up, that I might gloat
To see its quivering fibres start!
Ho! how I drank of the purple flood,
Quaffed and quaffed again of blood,
Till my brain grew dark, and I knew no more,
Till I found myself on this dungeon floor,
Fettered and held by this iron chain!
Ho! when I break its links again,
Ha! when I break its links again,
Woe to the daughters and sons of men!
My frame is shrunk, and my soul is sad,
And devils mock and call me mad.
Many a dark and fearful sight
Haunts me here in the gloom of night:
Mortal smile or human tear
Never cheers or soothes me here:
The spider shrinks from my grasp away,
Though he's known my form for many a day;
The slimy toad, with his diamond eye,
Watches afar, but comes not nigh:
The craven rat with her filthy brood,
Pilfers and gnaws my scanty food;
But when I strive to make her play,
Snaps at my hands, and flees away:
Light of day or ray of sun,
Friend or hope, I've none-I've none !
They called me mad: they left me here,
To my burning thoughts, and the fiend's despair,
Never, ah! never to see again
Earth, or sky, or sea, or plain;
Never to hear soft Pity's sigh-
Never to gaze on mortal eye;
Doomed through life, if life it be,
To helpless, hopeless misery.
Oh, if a single ray of light
Had pierced the gloom of this endless night;
If the cheerful tones of a single voice
Had made the depths of my heart rejoice;
If a single thing had loved me here,
I ne'er had crouched to these fiends' despair!
They come again! They tear my brain!
They tumble and dart through my every vein!
Ho! could I burst this clanking chain,
Then might I spring in the hellish ring,
And scatter them back to their den again!
Ho! when I break its links again,
Ha! when I break its links again,
Woe to the daughters and sons of men!
A FEVER Scorched my body, fired my brain!
Like lava, in Vesuvius, boiled my blood
Within the glowing caverns of my heart.
I raged with thirst, and begged a cold clear draught
Of fountain water. 'Twas with tears denied.
I drank a nauseous febrifuge, and slept;
But rested not-harassed with horrid dreams
Of burning deserts, and of dusty plains-
Mountains disgorging flames-forests on fire,
Steam, sunshine, smoke, and boiling lakes—
Hills of hot sand, and glowing stones that seemed
Embers and ashes of а burnt up world!
Thirst raged within me. I sought the deepest vale,
And called on all the rocks and caves for water;-
I climbed a mountain, and from cliff to cliff
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