His square-turned joints, and strength of limb,
Showed him no carpet-knight so trim,
But in close fight a champion grim,

In camps a leader sage.

Well was he armed from head to heel,
In mail and plate of Milan steel;
But his strong helm, of mighty cost,
Was all with burnished gold embossed;
Amid the plumage of the crest,

A falcon hovered on her nest,

With wings outspread, and forward breast;
E'en such a falcon, on his shield,

Soared sable in an azure field:
The golden legend bore aright,
Who checks at me to death is dight.
Blue was the charger's broidered rein;
Blue ribbons decked his arching mane;
The knightly housing's ample fold
Was velvet blue, and trapped with gold.

Behind him rode two gallant squires
Of noble name and knightly sires;
They burned the gilded spurs to claim;
For well could each a war-horse tame,
Could draw the bow, the sword could sway,
And lightly bear the ring away;
Nor less with courteous precepts stored,
Could dance in hall, and carve at board,
And frame love-ditties passing rare,
And sing them to a lady fair.

Four men-at-arms came at their backs,
With halbert, bill, and battle-axe;
They bore Lord Marmion's lance so strong,
And led his sumpter-mules along,
And ambling palfrey, when at need
Him listed ease his battle-steed.
The last and trustiest of the four
On high his forky pennon bore;
Like swallow's tail, in shape and hue,
Fluttered the streamer glossy blue,
Where, blazoned sable, as before,
The towering falcon seemed to soar.
Last, twenty yeomen, two and two,
In hosen black, and jerkins blue,
With falcons broidered on each breast,
Attended on their lord's behest:
Each, chosen for an archer good,
Knew hunting-craft by lake or wood;
Each one a six-foot bow could bend,
And far a cloth-yard shaft could send ;
Each held a boar-spear tough and strong,
And at their belts their quivers rung.
Their dusty palfreys and array
Showed they had marched a weary way.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

ALNWICK CASTLE.

HOME of the Percy's high-born race, Home of their beautiful and brave, Alike their birth and burial place,

Their cradle and their grave! Still sternly o'er the castle gate Their house's Lion stands in state,

As in his proud departed hours; And warriors frown in stone on high, And feudal banners "flout the sky" Above his princely towers.

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.

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 moous, 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,

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.

FITZ-GREENE HallECK.

SONNET.

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, LONDON, 1802.

EARTH has not anything to show more fair;
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty :
This city now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill ;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

NUREMBERG.

IN the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands

Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song,

Memories haunt thy pointed gables like the rooks that round them throng:

Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors rough and bold

Had their dwellings in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old;

And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme,

That their great, imperial city stretched its hand to every clime.

In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band,

Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand;

On the square, the oriel window, where in old heroic days

Sat the poet Melchior, singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise.

Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of art;

Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart;

And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone,

By a former age commissioned as apostles to our

own.

In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust,

And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust;

In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare,

Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air.

Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, the Evan

gelist of Art;

dreamy eye

Wave these mingling shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry.

Through these streets so broad and stately, these

obscure and dismal lanes,

Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains;

From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild,

Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

the anvil's chime,

Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom

In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.

But why despair? Twice hast thou lived already,
Twice shone among the nations of the world,
As the sun shines among the lesser lights
Of heaven; and shalt again. The hour shall
come,

When they who think to bind the ethereal spirit,
Who, like the eagle cowering o'er his prey,

the gentle craft,

But his house is now an alehouse, with a nicely

sanded floor,

And a garland in the window, and his face above the door,

Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song,

As the old man gray and dovelike, with his great beard white and long.

And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care,

Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair.

VENICE.

FROM "ITALY."

SAMUEL ROGERS.

Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,
The statues ranged along an azure sky;
By many a pile in more than Eastern splendor,
Of old the residence of merchant kings;

The fronts of some, though Time had shattered them,

Still glowing with the richest hues of art,

ROME.

FROM " ITALY."

Had to make sure the ground they stood upon,
Rose, like an exhalation, from the deep,
A vast Metropolis, with glittering spires,
With theatres, basilicas adorned;

A scene of light and glory, a dominion,
That has endured the longest among men.

And whence the talisman by which she rose
Towering? 'T was found there in the barren sea.
Want led to Enterprise; and, far or near,
Who met not the Venetian ?- now in Cairo ;
Ere yet the Califa came, listening to hear
Its bells approaching from the Red Sea coast;
Now on the Euxine, on the Sea of Azoph,
In converse with the Persian, with the Russ,
The Tartar; on his lowly deck receiving
Pearls from the gulf of Ormus, gems from Bagdad,
Eyes brighter yet, that shed the light of love
From Georgia, from Circassia. Wandering round,
When in the rich bazaar he saw, displayed,
Treasures from unknown climes, away he went,
And, travelling slowly upward, drew erelong
From the well-head supplying all below;
Making the Imperial City of the East
Herself his tributary.

Thou art in Rome! A thousand busy thoughts
Rush on my mind, a thousand images;
And I spring up as girt to run a race!

Thou art in Rome! the City that so long
Reigned absolute, the mistress of the world;
The mighty vision that the prophets saw,
And trembled; that from nothing, from the
least,

The lowliest village (what but here and there
A reed-roofed cabin by a river-side ?)
Grew into everything; and, year by year,
Patiently, fearlessly working her way
O'er brook and field, o'er continent and sea,
Not like the merchant with his merchandise,
Or traveller with staff and scrip exploring,
But hand to hand and foot to foot through hosts,
Through nations numberless in battle array,
Each behind each, each, when the other fell,
Up and in arms, at length subdued them all.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

COLISEUM BY MOONLIGHT.

FROM "MANFRED," ACT III. SC. 4.

THE stars are forth, the moon above the tops Beautiful! Of the snow-shining mountains.

I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness

I learned the language of another world.

I do remember me, that in my youth,
When I was wandering, - upon such a night

I stood within the Coliseum's wall,
Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome.
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near, from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bowshot, where the Cæsars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst

-

FROM "CHILDE HAROLD," CANTO IV.

ARCHES on arches ! as it were that Rome, Collecting the chief trophies of her line, Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine As 't were its natural torches, for divine Should be the light which streams here, to illume

This long-explored, but still exhaustless, mine Of contemplation; and the azure gloom Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,

Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruined battlement,

For which the palace of the present hour Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.

On the arena void, seats crushed, walls bowed, And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strange. ly loud.

A ruin, yet what ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,
And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.
Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared!
Alas! developed, opens the decay,

When the colossal fabric's form is neared;
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all years, man, have
reft away.

But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of
time,

And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head;
When the light shines serene, but doth not
glare,

Then in this magic circle raise the dead; Heroes have trod this spot, 't is on their dust ye tread.