"Some currish plot, some trick, (God wot!) hath laid you all so low, Ye died not altogether in one fair battle so; Not all the misbelievers ever pricked upon yon plain Thou youngest and the weakest, Gonzalez dear! wert thou, Yet well this false Almanzor remembers thee, I trow; "False Moor, I am thy captive thrall; but when thou bad'st me forth, To share the banquet in thy hall, I trusted in the worth Of kingly promise. Think'st thou not my God will hear my prayer? Lord! branchless be (like mine) his tree,-yea, branchless, Lord, and bare !" So prayed the baron in his ire; but when he looked again, Then burst the sorrow of the sire, and tears ran down like rain; Wrath no more could check the sorrow of the old and childless man, And, like waters in a furrow, down his cheeks the salt tears ran. He took their heads up one by one, he kissed them o'er and o'er, And aye ye saw the tears down run,-I wot that grief was sore. He closed the lids on their dead eyes all with his fingers frail, And handled all their bloody curls, and kissed their lips so pale. 66 had ye died all by my side upon some famous day, My fair young men, no weak tears then had washed your blood away! The trumpet of Castile had drowned the misbelievers' horn, And the last of all the Lara's line a Gothic spear had borne." With that it chanced a Moor drew near, to lead him from the place, Old Lara stooped him down once more, and kissed Gonzalez' face; But ere the man observéd him, or could his gesture bar, Sudden he from his side had grasped that Moslem's cimeter. O, swiftly from its scabbard the crooked blade he drew, And, like some frantic creature, among them all he flew :"Where, where is false Almanzor ?-back, bastards of Ma houn !" And here and there, in his despair, the old man hewed them down. A hundred hands, a hundred brands, are ready in the hall, To keep his children company beneath the Moorish sod. Ex. CV.-TO THE NEAPOLITANS. THOMAS MOORE. AYE-down to the dust with them, slaves as they are, Be wasted for tyrants, or stagnate in chains. On, on like a cloud, through their beautiful vales, Fill, fill up their wide sunny waters, ye sails From each slave-mart of Europe, and shadow their shore! Let their fate be a mock-word, let men of all lands Laugh out with a scorn that shall ring to the poles, When each sword, that the cowards let fall from their hands, And deep, and more deep, as the iron is driven, To think-as the doomed often think of that heaven They had once within reach-that they might have been free. When the world stood in hope-when a spirit that breathed When around you the shades of your mighty in fame, And their words, and their warnings, like tongues of bright flame Over Freedom's apostles, fell kindling on you! Oh shame! that in such a proud moment of life, Between freemen and tyrants had spread through the world, That then-oh! disgrace upon manhood-even then It is strange, it is dreadful ;-shout, Tyranny, shout J. G. WHITTIER. Ex. CVI.-THE SEER. I HEAR the far-off voyager's horn, His foot on every mountain pass, He's whittling round St. Mary's falls, He's leaving on the pictured rocks I hear the mattock in the mine, I see the swarthy trappers come The war-chiefs with their painted bows, Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe, I hear the tread of pioneers Of nations yet to be; The first low wash of waves that soon Shall roll a human sea. The rudiments of empire here Are plastic yet and warm; The chaos of a mighty world Each rude and jostling fragment soon The raw material of a state, Its music and its mind. And western still, the star, which leads Has tipped with fire the icy spears Ex. CVII.-CITY AND COUNTRY. O. W. HOLMES. Come back to your mothers, ye children, for shame, Come out from your alleys, your courts, and your lanes, Come, you of the law, who can talk, if you please, Ye healers of men, for a moment decline You clerk, on whose ears are a couple of pens, Poor drudge of the city! how happy he feels In yonder green meadow, to memory dear, The dew-drops hang around him on blossoms and shoots,- There stands the old school-house, hard by the old church; Though the prairie of youth had so many "big licks !" By the side of yon river he weeps and he slumps, 'Tis past,--he is dreaming-I see him again; |