RIENZI TO THE ROMANS.

FROM "RIENZI."

BOADICEA.

FRIENDS!

I come not here to talk. Ye know too well
The story of our thraldom. We are slaves!
The bright sun rises to his course, and lights
A race of slaves! he sets, and his last beam
Falls on a slave ! Not such as, swept along
By the full tide of power, the conqueror leads
To crimson glory and undying fame,

But base, ignoble slaves! slaves to a horde
Of petty tyrants, feudal despots; lords
Rich in some dozen paltry villages,

Strong in some hundred spearmen, only great
In that strange spell, a name! Each hour,

dark fraud,

mon.

I have known deeper wrongs. I, that speak to ye.
I had a brother once, a gracious boy,
Full of all gentleness, of calmest hope,
Of sweet and quiet joy; there was the look
Of Heaven upon his face which limners give
To the beloved disciple. How I loved
That gracious boy! younger by fifteen years,
Brother at once and son! He left my side;
A summer bloom on his fair cheeks, a smile
Parting his innocent lips. In one short hour
The pretty, harmless boy was slain ! I saw
The corse, the mangled corse, and then I cried
For vengeance ! Rouse ye, Romans ! Rouse

ye, slaves! Have ye brave sons? - Look in the next fierce brawl

To see them die! Have ye fair daughters? — Look
To see them live, torn from your arms, distained,
Dishonored; and, if ye dare call for justice.
Be answered by the lash! Yet this is Rome,
That sat on her seven hills, and from her throne
Of beauty ruled the world! Yet we are Romans !
Why, in that elder day, to be a Roman
Was greater than a king! And once again --
Hear me, ye walls, that echoed to the tread
Of either Brutus !- — once again, I swear,
The eternal city shall be free; her sons shali
walk with princes.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD

war,

What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?

"T is thine, O Glenullin! whose bride shall await, Like a love-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate.

A steed comes at morning: no rider is there;
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.
Weep, Albin! to death and captivity led !
O, weep! but thy tears cannot number the dead;
For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave,
Culloden ! that reeks with the blood of the brave.

LOCHIEL.

Go, preach to the coward, thou death-telling

seer!

Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear,
Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight
This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright.

WIZARD.

Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn? Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be

torn!

Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth
From his home in the dark rolling clouds of the

north?

Lo! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding, he

rode

Companionless, bearing destruction abroad;
But down let him stoop from his havoc on high!
Ah! home let him speed, for the spoiler is
nigh.

Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the

blast

Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast? "T is the fire-shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven From his eyrie, that beacons the darkness of

heaven.

O crested Lochiel! the peerless in might,
Whose banners arise on the battlements' height,
Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn;
Return to thy dwelling! all lonely return!
For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it

stood,

Culloden is lost, and my country deplores,
But where is the iron-bound prisoner? Where?
For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.
Say, mounts he the ocean-wave, banished, for-
lorn,

Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?

Ah no! for a darker departure is near ;
The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier ;
His death-bell is tolling: O mercy, dispel
Yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell!
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.
Accursed be the fagots that blaze at his feet,
Where his heart shall be thrown ere it ceases to
beat,

With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale

LOCHIEL.

SCOTLAND.

FROM "THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL," CANTO VI.

O CALEDONIA ! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band

That knits me to thy rugged strand?
Still, as I view each well-known scene,
Think what is now, and what hath been,
Seems as, to me, of all bereft,

Sole friends thy woods and streams were left;
And thus I love them better still,
Even in extremity of ill.

By Yarrow's stream still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chilled my withered cheek;
Still lay my head by Teviot stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,
The bard may draw his parting groan.

Be fickle, and thy year most part deformed
With dripping rains, or withered by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flower, for warmer France
With all her vines; nor for Ausonia's groves
Of golden fruitage and her myrtle bowers.
To shake thy senate, and from Leight sublime
Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire
Upon thy foes, was never meant my task:
But I can feel thy fortunes, and partake
Thy joys and sorrows with as true a heart
As any thunderer there. And I can feel
Thy follies too; and with a just disdain
Frown at effeminates whose very looks
Reflect dishonor on the land I love.

How, in the name of soldiership and sense,