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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.

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;
"T is 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 Douglass 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.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

THE FISHER'S COTTAGE.
WE sat by the fisher's cottage,
And looked at the stormy tide;
The evening mist came rising,

And floating far and wide.

One by one in the lighthouse

The lamps shone out on high;
And far on the dim horizon
A ship went sailing by.

We spoke of storm and shipwreck,
Of sailors, and how they live;

Of journeys 'twixt sky and water,
And the sorrows and joys they give.

We spoke of distant countries,
In regions strange and fair,
And of the wondrous beings
And curious customs there;

Of perfumed lamps on the Ganges,

Which are launched in the twilight hour; And the dark and silent Brahmins,

Who worship the lotos flower.

Of the wretched dwarfs of Lapland,

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Broad-headed, wide-mouthed, and small,Who crouch round their oil-fires, cooking, And chatter and scream and bawl.

And the maidens earnestly listened,
Till at last we spoke no more;
The ship like a shadow had vanished,
And darkness fell deep on the shore.
HENRY HEINE (German). Translation

of CHARLES G. LELAND.

I seek ye vainly, and see in your place

The shadowy tempest that sweeps through space,
A whirling ocean that fills the wall
Of the crystal heaven, and buries all.
And I, cut off from the world, remain
Alone with the terrible hurricane.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

THE HURRICANE.

LORD of the winds! I feel thee nigh,
I know thy breath in the burning sky!
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein,
For the coming of the hurricane !

And lo! on the wing of the heavy gales,
Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails.
Silent and slow, and terribly strong,
The mighty shadow is borne along,
Like the dark eternity to come;
While the world below, dismayed and dumb,
Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere
Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear.

They darken fast; and the golden blaze
Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze,
And he sends through the shade a funeral ray
A glare that is neither night nor day,
A beam that touches, with hues of death,
The clouds above and the earth beneath.
To its covert glides the silent bird,
While the hurricane's distant voice is heard
Uplifted among the mountains round,
And the forests hear and answer the sound.

He is come! he is come! do ye not behold
His ample robes on the wind unrolled?
Giant of air! we bid thee hail ! —
How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale;
How his huge and writhing arms are bent
To clasp the zone of the firmament,
And fold at length, in their dark embrace,
From mountain to mountain the visible space.

Darker, still darker! the whirlwinds bear
The dust of the plains to the middle air;
And hark to the crashing, long and loud,
Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud!
You may trace its path by the flashes that start
From the rapid wheels where'er they dart,
As the fire-bolts leap to the world below,
And flood the skies with a lurid glow.

HOLLAND.

FROM "THE TRAVELLER."

To men of other minds my fancy flies,
Embosomed in the deep where Holland lies.
Methinks her patient sons before me stand,
Where the broad ocean leans against the land,
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide,
Lift the tall rampire's artificial pride.
Onward methinks, and diligently slow,
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow ;
Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar,
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore.
While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile,
Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile;
The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail,
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain,
A new creation rescued from his reign.

Thus while around the wave-subjected soil
Impels the native to repeated toil,
Industrious habits in each bosom reign,
And industry begets a love of gain.
Hence all the good from opulence that springs,
With all those ills superfluous treasure brings,
Are here displayed.

j OLIVER GOLDSMITH,

ITALY AND SWITZERLAND.

FROM THE TRAVELLER."

FAR to the right where Apennine ascends,
Bright as the summer, Italy extends.
Its uplands sloping deck the mountain's side,
Woods over woods, in gay theatric pride;
While oft some temple's mouldering tops between
With venerable grandeur mark the scene.

Could nature's bounty satisfy the breast,
The sons of Italy were surely blest.
Whatever fruits in different climes were found,
That proudly rise, or humbly court the ground;

What roar is that?'t is the rain that breaks Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear,
In torrents away from the airy lakes,
Heavily poured on the shuddering ground,
And shedding a nameless horror round.
Ah! well-known woods, and mountains, and skies,
With the very clouds !-ye are lost to my eyes.

Whose bright succession decks the varied year;
Whatever sweets salute the northern sky
With vernal lives, that blossom but to die;
These here disporting own the kindred soil,
Nor ask luxuriance from the planter's toil;

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