Nor ever shall the Muse's eye

Unraptured greet thy beam:

Theme of primeval prophecy,

Be still the poet's theme!

The earth to thee her incense yields,

The lark thy welcome sings,

When glittering in the freshen'd fields

The snowy mushroom springs.

How glorious is thy girdle cast

O'er mountain, tower, and town,

Or mirror'd in the ocean vast,

A thousand fathoms down!

As fresh in yon horizon dark,

As young thy beauties seem,

As when the eagle from the ark
First sported in thy beam.

For, faithful to its sacred page,
Heaven still rebuilds thy span,

Nor lets the type grow pale with age

That first spoke peace to man.

THE BRAVE ROLAND.*

THE brave Roland!-the brave Roland!

False tidings reach'd the Rhenish strand
That he had fall'n in fight;

And thy faithful bosom swoon'd with pain,
O loveliest maiden of Allémayne!

For the loss of thine own true knight.

*The tradition which forms the substance of these stanzas is still preserved in Germany. An ancient tower on a height, called the Rolandseck, a few miles above Bonn on the Rhine, is shewn as the habitation which Roland built in sight of a nunnery, into which his mistress had retired, on having heard an unfounded account of his death. Whatever may be thought of the credibility of the legend, its scenery must be recollected

But why so rash has she ta'en the veil,

Woe! woe! each heart shall bleed-shall break!

She would have hung upon his neck,

Had he come but yester-even;

And he had clasp'd those peerless charms
That shall never, never fill his arms,

Or meet him but in heaven.

with pleasure by every one who has ever visited the romantic landscape of the Drachenfells, the Rolandseck, and the beautiful adjacent islet of the Rhine, where a nunnery still stands.

Yet Roland the brave-Roland the true

He could not bid that spot adieu;

It was dear still 'midst his woes;

For he loved to breathe the neighbʼring air, And to think she blest him in her prayer,

When the Halleluiah rose.

There's yet one window of that pile,

Which he built above the Nun's green

Thence sad and oft look'd he

isle;

(When the chant and organ sounded slow)

On the mansion of his love below,

For herself he might not see.

She died! He sought the battle-plain;

Her image fill'd his dying brain,