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A gentle hill its side inclines,
Lovely in England's fadeless green,
To meet the quiet stream which winds
Through this romantic scene

As silently and sweetly still

As when, at evening, on that hill,

While summer's wind blew soft and low,
Seated by gallant Hotspur's side,
His Katherine was a happy bride,
A thousand years ago.

Gaze on the Abbey's ruined pile :
Does not the succouring ivy, keeping
Her watch around it, seem to smile,
As o'er a loved one sleeping?
One solitary turret grey

Still tells, in melancholy glory,
The legend of the Cheviot day,

The Percy's proudest border story.
That day its roof was triumph's arch;
Then rang, from aisle to pictured dome,
The light step of the soldier's march,
The music of the trump and drum ;
And babe, and sire, the old, the young,
And the monk's hymn, and minstrel's song,
And woman's pure kiss, sweet and long,
Welcomed her warrior home.

Wild roses by the Abbey towers

Are gay in their young bud and bloom : They were born of a race of funeral flowers That garlanded, in long-gone hours,

A templar's knightly tomb.

He died, the sword in his mailèd hand,

On the holiest spot of the Blessed Land,

Where the Cross was damped with his dying breath,

When blood ran free as festal wine,

And the sainted air of Palestine

Was thick with the darts of death.

Wise with the lore of centuries,

What tales, if there be "tongues in trees,"
Those giant oaks could tell,
Of beings born and buried here!
Tales of the peasant and the peer,
Tales of the bridal and the bier,"
►The welcome and farewell,

Since on their boughs the startled bird
First, in her twilight slumbers, heard
The Norman's curfew-bell.

I wandered through the lofty halls
Trod by the Percys of old fame,
And traced upon the chapel walls
Each high heroic name,

From him who once his standard set
Where now, o'er mosque and minaret,`
Glitter the Sultan's crescent moons;
To him who, when a younger son,
Fought for King George at Lexington,
A major of dragoons.

That last half stanza-it has dashed

From my warm lip the sparkling cup; The light that o'er my eyebeam flashed, The power that bore my spirit up Above this bank-note world—is gone; And Alnwick's but a market town, And this, alas! its market day,

And beasts and borderers throng the way; Oxen and bleating lambs in lots, Northumbrian boors and plaided Scots,

Men in the coal and cattle line; From Teviot's bard and hero land, From royal Berwick's beach of sand, From Wooller, Morpeth, Hexham, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

These are not the romantic times
So beautiful in Spenser's rhymes,

So dazzling to the dreaming boy:
Ours are the days of fact, not fable,
Of knights, but not of the round table,
Of Bailie Jarvie, not Rob Roy:
'Tis what "our President," Monroe,
Has called "the era of good feeling :"
The Highlander, the bitterest foe
To modern laws, has felt their blow,
Consented to be taxed, and vote,
And put on pantaloons and coat,
And leave off cattle-stealing:
Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,

The Douglas in red herrings;
And noble name and cultured land,
Palace, and park, and vassal band,
Are powerless to the notes of hand
Of Rothschild or the Barings.

The age of bargaining, said Burke,
Has come to-day the turbaned Turk

(Sleep, Richard of the lion heart!
Sleep on, nor from your cerements start)
Is England's friend and fast ally;
The Moslem tramples on the Greek,
And on the Cross and altar-stone,
And Christendom looks tamely on,
And hears the Christian maiden shriek,
And sees the Christian father die ;
And not a sabre-blow is given

For Greece and fame, for faith and heaven,
By Europe's craven chivalry.

You'll ask if yet the Percy lives

In the armed pomp of feudal state..
The present representatives

Of Hotspur and his "gentle Kate"
Are some half-dozen serving men
In the drab coat of William Penn;

A chambermaid, whose lip and eye,
And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling,
Spoke nature's aristocracy;

And one, half groom, half seneschal,

Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall,
From donjon-keep to turret wall,

For ten-and-sixpence sterling.

JOHN GARDNER CALKINS BRAINARD.

[Born in 1796, died in 1828. In his brief career he was first called to the bar; then undertook the editorship of a weekly gazette; and consumption closed a somewhat desultory and melancholy life].

SONNET TO THE SEA-SERPENT.

"Hugest that swims the ocean stream."

WELTER upon the waters, mighty one

And stretch thee in the ocean's trough of brine;
Turn thy wet scales up to the wind and sun,
And toss the billow from thy flashing fin;

Heave thy deep breathings to the ocean's din,

And bound upon its ridges in thy pride:

Or dive down to its lowest depths, and in
The caverns where its unknown monsters hide
Measure thy length beneath the gulf-stream's tide-
Or rest thee on that navel of the sea
Where, floating on the Maelstrom, abide

The krakens sheltering under Norway's lee;
But go not to Nahant, lest men should swear
You are a great deal bigger than you are.

GEORGE P. MORRIS.

[Born in 1801, died towards 1865. A general in the army, dramatist, and miscellaneous writer; especially popular for his songs, one of which is the universally known "Woodman, spare that tree"].

THE RETORT.

OLD NICK, who taught the village school,
Wedded a maid of homespun habit;
He was stubborn as a mule,

She was playful as a rabbit.

Poor Jane had scarce become a wife,

Before her husband sought to make her

The pink of country polished life,

And prim and formal as a Quaker.

One day the tutor went abroad,

And simple Jenny sadly missed him ;
When he returned, behind her lord

She slyly stole, and fondly kissed him.

The husband's anger rose-and red

And white his face alternate grew.

"Less freedom, ma'am !"-Jane sighed and said,
"Oh dear! I didn't know 'twas you!"

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

[Born in 1808 at Haverhill, Massachusetts, where his ancestors, of the Quaker denomination, had long been settled. Mr. Whittier was early engaged in farming operations; and afterwards as a political, and more especially a protectionist, journalist. In 1836 he became one of the secretaries of the Anti-Slavery Society and some of his most vigorous and rousing poems are devoted to that noble cause. He has also written various prose works; one of the chief among which is Supernaturalism in New England, published in 1847. The bulk of Mr. Whittier's poetical writings is considerable. His name stands high in the United States, and ought in England to be better known than as yet it is. An upright manly energy, and the tenderness of a strong yet delicate nature, are constantly conspicuous in his writings. These fine qualities are mostly associated with a genuine poetic grace, and in many instances with art truly solid and fine]. THE DEMON OF THE STUDY.

THE Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room,
And eats his meat and drinks his ale,
And beats the maid with her unused broom,
And the lazy lout with his idle flail ;

But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn,
And hies him away ere the break of dawn.

1 In this case and another (see Park Benjamin), where I say "towards 1865" as the date of death, I have reason to infer that the authors were alive in 1863, but have died since then, though the precise year of death is uncertain to me: 1865 is named as an approximation.

The shade of Denmark fled from the sun,
And the Cocklane ghost from the barnloft cheer,
The fiend of Faust was a faithful one,

Agrippa's demon wrought in fear,
And the devil of Martin Luther sat
By the stout monk's side in social chat.

The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him
Who seven times crossed the deep,
Twined closely each lean and withered limb,
Like the nightmare in one's sleep.
But he drank of the wine, and Sinbad cast
The evil weight from his back at last.

But the demon that cometh day by day
To my quiet room and fireside nook,
Where the casement light falls dim and grey
On faded painting and ancient book,
Is a sorrier one than any whose names
Are chronicled well by good king James.

No bearer of burdens like Caliban,

No runner of errands like Ariel,
He comes in the shape of a fat old man,
Without rap of knuckle or pull of bell;
And whence he comes, or whither he goes,
I know as I do of the wind which blows.

A stout old man with a greasy hat

Slouched heavily down to his dark red nose, And two grey eyes enveloped in fat,

Looking through glasses with iron bows.
Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who can
Guard well your doors from that old man!

He comes with a careless "How d'ye do?"
And seats himself in my elbow-chair;
And my morning paper and pamphlet new
Fall forthwith under his special care;

And he wipes his glasses and clears his throat,
And, button by button, unfolds his coat.

And then he reads from paper and book,
In a low and husky asthmatic tone,
With the stolid sameness of posture and look
Of one who reads to himself alone:
And hour after hour on my senses come
That husky wheeze and that dolorous hum.

The price of stocks, the auction sales,
The poet's song and the lover's glee,
The horrible murders, the seaboard gales,

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