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When stubborn Russ, and metal'd Swede,

On the warped wave their death-game played;

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Or that, where vengeance and affright

Howl'd round the father of the fight,

Who snatched on Alexandria's sand

The conqueror's wreath with dying hand.

"Or, if to touch such chord be thine,

Restore the ancient tragic line,

And emulate the notes that rung

From the wild harp which silent hung,
By silver Avon's holy shore,

Till twice an hundred years rolled o'er;
When she, the bold Enchantress, came,

With fearless hand and heart on flame!

From the pale willow snatched the treasure,

And swept it with a kindred measure,

Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove

With Montfort's hate and Basil's love,

Awakening at the inspired strain,

Deemed their own Shakespeare lived again."

Thy friendship thus thy judgment wronging, With praises not to me belonging,

In task more meet for mightiest powers,

Would'st thou engage my thriftless hours.
But say, my Erskine, hast thou weighed
That secret power by all obeyed,
Which warps not less the passive mind,
Its source concealed or undefined;
Whether an impulse, that has birth

Soon as the infant wakes on earth,
One with our feelings and our powers,

And rather part of us than ours;
Or whether fitlier termed the sway
Of habit, formed in early day?
Howe'er derived, its force confessed
Rules with despotic sway the breast,
And drags us on by viewless chain,
While taste and reason plead in vain.
Look east, and ask the Belgian why,
Beneath Batavia's sultry sky,

He seeks not eager to inhale

The freshness of the mountain gale,

Content to rear his whitened wall

Beside the dank and dull canal?

He'll say, from youth he loved to see
The white sail gliding by the tree.
Or see yon weather-beaten hind,

Whose sluggish herds before him wind,
Whose tattered plaid and rugged cheek

His northern clime and kindred speak;
Through England's laughing meads he goes,
And England's wealth around him flows;
Ask, if it would content him well,

At ease in these gay plains to dwell,

Where hedge-rows spread a verdant screen,

And spires and forests intervene,

And the neat cottage peeps between ?
No! not for these will he exchange

His dark Lochaber's boundless range,

Nor for fair Devon's meads forsake

Bennevis grey and Garry's lake.

Thus, while I ape the measure wild
Of tales that charmed me yet a child,
Rude though they be, still with the chime.
Return the thoughts of early time;

And feelings, roused in life's first day,
Glow in the line, and prompt the lay.

Then rise those crags, that mountain tower,

Which charmed my fancy's wakening hour, Though no broad river swept along,

To claim, perchance, heroic song; Though sighed no groves in summer gale, To prompt of love a softer tale;

Though scarce a puny streamlet's speed Claimed homage from a shepherd's reed;

Yet was poetic impulse given,

By the green hill and clear blue heaven.

It was a barren scene, and wild,

Where naked cliffs were rudely piled;

But ever and anon between

Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;
And well the lonely infant knew
Recesses where the wall-flower grew,

And honey-suckle loved to crawl

Up the low crag and ruined wall

I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade
The sun in all his round surveyed;

And still I thought that shattered tower

The mightiest work of human power;

And marvelled, as the aged hind

With some strange tale bewitched my mind,

Of forayers, who, with headlong force,

Down from that strength had spurred their horse,

Their southern rapine to renew,

Far in the distant Cheviots blue,

And, home returning, filled the hall

With revel, wassell-route, and brawl.

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