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'Tis the better, my mates! for the warder's dull

eye

Shall in confidence slumber, nor dream we are

nigh.

Our steeds are impatient! I hear my blithe Gray! There is life in his hoof-clang, and hope in his

neigh;

Like the flash of a meteor, the glance of his mane Shall marshal your march through the darkness and rain.

The drawbridge has dropp'd, the bugle has blown; One pledge is to quaff yet-then mount and begone!—

To their honour and peace, that shall rest with the

slain;

To their health and their glee, that see Teviot

again!

THE

MONKS OF BANGOR'S MARCH.

AIR-" Ymdaith Mionge."

WRITTEN FOR MR. GEORGE THOMSON'S WELSH MELODIES.

[1817.]

ETHELFRID, or OLFRID, King of Northumberland, having besieged Chester in 613, and BROCKMAEL, Ɑ British Prince, advancing to relieve it, the religious of the neighbouring Monastery of Bangor marched in procession, to pray for the success of their countrymen. But the British being totally defeated, the heathen victor put the monks to the sword, and destroyed their monastery. The tune to which these verses are adapted, is called the Monks' March, and is supposed to have been played at their ill-omened procession.

WHEN the heathen trumpet's clang

Round beleaguer'd Chester rang,
Veiled nun and friar gray

March'd from Bangor's fair Abbaye;

High their holy anthem sounds,
Cestria's vale the hymn rebounds,
Floating down the sylvan Dee,

O miserere, Domine!

On the long procession goes,
Glory round their crosses glows,
And the Virgin-mother mild
In their peaceful banner smiled;
Who could think such saintly band
Doom'd to feel unhallow'd hand?
Such was the Divine decree,

O miserere, Domine!

Bands that masses only sung,
Hands that censors only swung,
Met the northern bow and bill,
Heard the war-cry wild and shrill:
Woe to Brockmael's feeble hand,
Woe to Olfrid's bloody brand,

Woe to Saxon cruelty,

O miserere, Domine!

Weltering amid warriors slain,

Spurn'd by steeds with bloody mane,

Slaughter'd down by heathen blade,
Bangor's peaceful monks are laid:
Word of parting rest unspoke,
Mass unsung, and bread unbroke;
For their souls for charity,

Sing, O miserere, Domine!

Bangor! o'er the murder wail!
Long thy ruins told the tale,
Shatter'd towers and broken arch
Long recall'd the woeful march:1
On thy shrine no tapers burn,
Never shall thy priests return;

The pilgrim sighs and sings for thee,

O miserere, Domine!

1 William of Malmsbury says, that in his time the extent of the ruins of the monastery bore ample witness to the desolation occasioned by the massacre;-"tot semiruti parietes ecclesiarum, tot anfractus porticum, tanta turba ruderum quantum vix alibi cernas."

FAREWELL TO THE MUSE.1

ENCHANTRESS, farewell, who so oft has decoy'd me, At the close of the evening through woodlands

to roam,

Where the forester, lated, with wonder espied me Explore the wild scenes he was quitting for

home.

Farewell, and take with thee thy numbers wild speaking

The language alternate of rapture and woe: Oh! none but some lover, whose heart-strings are breaking,

The

pang that I feel at our parting can know.

Each joy thou couldst double, and when there came

sorrow,

Or pale disappointment to darken my way, What voice was like thine, that could sing of tomorrow,

Till forgot in the strain was the grief of to-day!

1[Written, during illness, for Mr. Thomson's Scottish Collection, and first published in 1822, united to an air composed by George Kinloch of Kinloch, Esq.]

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