He strack the tapmast wi' his hand,
The foremast wi' his knee;

And he brake that gallant ship in twain,
And sank her in the sea.

MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORder.

The Lawlands of Holland

THE Love that I have chosen

I'll therewith be content; The salt sea shall be frozen Before that I repent. Repent it shall I never

Until the day I dee!

But the Lawlands of Holland
Have twinn'd my Love and me.

My Love he built a bonny ship,
And set her to the main ;
With twenty-four brave mariners
To sail her out and hame.
But the weary wind began to rise,
The sea began to rout,

And my Love and his bonny ship
Turn'd withershins about.

There shall no mantle cross my back,
No comb go in my hair,
Neither shall coal nor candle-light

Shine in my bower mair;

Nor shall I choose another Love

Until the day I dee,

Since the Lawlands of Holland

Have twinn'd my Love and me.

'Now haud your tongue, my daughter dear,
Be still, and bide content!
There's other lads in Galloway;
Ye needna sair lament.'
-O there is none in Galloway,
There's none at all for me :-
I never loved a lad but one,

And he's drown'd in the sea.

UNKNOWN.

The Valley of Unrest

Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell:
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly from their azure towers
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sunlight lazily lay.
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley's restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless-
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet heaven
Unceasingly, from morn till even.
Over the violets there that lie

In myriad types of the human eye-
Over the lilies there that wave

And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave-from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops;
They weep-from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.

POE.

The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna

NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed,
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow !

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,-
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done

When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone-
But we left him alone with his glory!

-

C. WOLFE.

St. Swithin's Chair

ON Hallow-Mass Eve, ere you boune ye to rest,
Ever beware that your couch be bless'd;

Sign it with cross, and sain it with bead,
Sing the Ave, and say the Creed.

For on Hallow-Mass Eve the Night-Hag will ride,
And all her nine-fold sweeping on by her side,
Whether the wind sing lowly or loud,

Sailing through moonshine or swath'd in the cloud.

The Lady she sate in St. Swithin's Chair,
The dew of the night has damp'd her hair:

Her cheek was pale-but resolved and high
Was the word of her lip and the glance of her eye.

She mutter'd the spell of Swithin bold,

When his naked foot traced the midnight wold,
When he stopp'd the Hag as she rode the night,
And bade her descend, and her promise plight.
He that dare sit on St. Swithin's Chair,
When the Night-Hag wings the troubled air,
Questions three, when he speaks the spell,
He may ask, and she must tell.

The Baron has been with King Robert his liege,
These three long years in battle and siege ;
News are there none of his weal or his woe
And fain the Lady his fate would know.

She shudders and stops as the charm she speaks ;-
Is it the moody owl that shrieks?

Or is that sound, betwixt laughter and scream,
The voice of the Demon who haunts the stream?

The moan of the wind sunk silent and low,
And the roaring torrent had ceased to flow;
The calm was more dreadful than raging storm,
When the cold grey mist brought the ghastly form!

SCOTT.

Stanzas Written on the Road between Florence and Pisa

OH, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?

'Tis but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled. Then away with all such from the head that is hoary! What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory!

Oh FAME !—if I e'er took delight in thy praises, 'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,

Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover,
She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.

There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee ;
Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee;
When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story,
I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory.

Barthram's Dirge

BYRON.

THEY shot him dead on the Nine-Stone Rig,

Beside the Headless Cross,

And they left him lying in his blood,
Upon the moor and moss.

They made a bier of the broken bough,
The sauch and the aspin gray,
And they bore him to the Lady Chapel,
And waked him there all day.

A lady came to that lonely bower
And threw her robes aside,

She tore her ling (long) yellow hair,
And knelt at Barthram's side.

She bath'd him in the Lady-Well
His wounds so deep and sair,

And she plaited a garland for his breast,

And a garland for his hair.

They rowed him in a lily sheet,

And bare him to his earth,

(And the Grey Friars sung the dead man's mass, As they passed the Chapel Garth).

They buried him at (the mirk) midnight,

(When the dew fell cold and still,

When the aspin gray forgot to play,
And the mist clung to the hill).

They dug his grave but a bare foot deep,
By the edge of the Nine-Stone Burn,

And they covered him (o'er with the heather-flower)
The moss and the (Lady) fern.