THE last, the fatal hour is come,
That bears my love from me:
I hear the dead note of the drum,
I mark the gallows' tree!
The bell has tolled; it shakes my heart;
The trumpet speaks thy name;
And must my Gilderoy depart
To bear a death of shame?
No bosom trembles for thy doom;
No mourner wipes a tear;
The gallows' foot is all thy tomb,
The sledge is all thy bier..
O, Gilderoy! bethought we then
So soon, so sad to part,
When first in Roslin's lovely glen
You triumphed o'er my heart?
Your locks they glittered to the sheen,
Your hunter garb was trim;
And graceful was the ribbon green
That bound your manly limb!
Ah! little thought I to deplore
Those limbs in fetters bound;
Or hear, upon the scaffold floor,
The midnight hammer sound.
Ye cruel, cruel, that combined
The guiltless to pursue ;
My Gilderoy was ever kind,
He could not injure you!
A long adieu! but where shall fly
Thy widow all forlorn,
When every mean and cruel eye
Regards my woe with scorn?
Yes! they will mock thy widow's tears,
And hate thine orphan boy;
Alas! his infant beauty wears
The form of Gilderoy.
Then will I seek the dreary mound
That wraps thy mouldering clay,
And weep and linger on the ground,
And sigh my heart away.
ON THE THREATENED INVASION, 1803.
OUR bosoms we'll bare for the glorious strife,
And our oath is recorded on high,
To prevail in the cause that is dearer than life,
Or crushed in its ruins to die!
Then rise, fellow-freemen, and stretch the right hand,
And swear to prevail in your dear native land!
"T is the home we hold sacred is laid to our trust
God bless the green Isle of the brave!
Should a conqueror tread on our forefathers' dust,
It would rouse the old dead from their grave!
Then rise, fellow-freemen, and stretch the right hand,
And swear to prevail in your dear native land!
In a Briton's sweet home shall a spoiler abide,
Profaning its loves and its charms?
Shall a Frenchman insult the loved fair at our side?
To arms! O, my Country, to arms!
Then rise, fellow-freemen, and stretch the right hand, And swear to prevail in your dear native land!
Shall a tyrant enslave us, my countrymen ! — No!
His head to the sword shall be given-
A death-bed repentance be taught the proud foe,
And his blood be an offering to Heaven!
Then rise, fellow-freemen, and stretch the right hand,
And swear to prevail in your dear native land!
THE RITTER BANN.
THE Ritter Bann from Hungary
Came back, renowned in arms,
But scorning jousts of chivalry,
And love and ladies' charms.
While other knights held revels, he
Was rapt in thoughts of gloom,
And in Vienna's hostelrie
Slow paced his lonely room.
There entered one whose face he knew,
Whose voice, he was aware,
He oft at mass had listened to
In the holy house of prayer.
'Twas the Abbot of St. James's monks,
A fresh and fair old man : His reverend air arrested even The gloomy Ritter Bann.
But seeing with him an ancient dame
Come clad in Scotch attire,
The Ritter's color went and came,
And loud he spoke in ire:
"Ha! nurse of her that was my bane,
Name not her name to me;
I wish it blotted from my brain:
Art poor?-take alms, and flee."
"Sir Knight," the abbot interposed,
"This case your ear demands;"
And the crone cried, with a cross enclosed
In both her trembling hands,
"Remember, each his sentence waits;
And he that shall rebut
Sweet Mercy's suit, on him the gates
Of Mercy shall be shut.
You wedded, undispensed by Church,
Your cousin Jane in Spring;
In Autumn, when you went to search
For churchman's pardoning,
Her house denounced your marriage-band,
Betrothed her to De Grey,
And the ring you put upon her hand
Was wrenched by force away.
Then wept your Jane upon my neck,
Crying, 'Help me, nurse, to flee
To my Howel Bann's Glamorgan hills;'
But word arrived-ah me! -
You were not there; and 't was their threat,
By foul means or by fair,
To-morrow morning was to set
The seal on her despair.
I had a son, a sea-boy, in
A ship at Hartland Bay;
By his aid from her cruel kin
I bore my bird away.
To Scotland from the Devon's
Green myrtle shores we fled;
And the Hand that sent the ravens
To Elijah gave us bread.
She wrote you by my son, but he
From England sent us word
You had gone into some far countrie,
In grief and gloom, he heard.
For they that wronged you, to elude
Your wrath, defamed my child;
And you-ay, blush, Sir, as you should-
Believed, and were beguiled.
To die but at your feet, she vowed
To roam the world; and we
Would both have sped and begged our bread, But so it might not be.
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