The Spanish Champion. 419 Lady Clara Vere de Vere, you put strange memories in my head, Not thrice your branching limes have blown since I beheld young Laurence dead. Oh! your sweet eyes, your low replies: a great enchantress you may be; But there was that across his throat which you had hardly cared to see. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, when thus he met his mother's view, She had the passions of her kind, she spake some certain truths of you. Indeed, I heard one bitter word that scarce is fit for you to hear; Her manners had not that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, there stands a spectre in your hall: The guilt of blood is at your door: you changed a wholesome heart to gall. You held your course without remorse, to make him trust his modest worth, And, last, you fix'd a vacant stare, and slew him with your noble birth. Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, from yon blue heavens above us bent, The grand old gardener and his wife smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'tis only noble to be good; Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood. I know you, Clara Vere de Vere: you pine among your halls and towers: The languid light of your proud eyes is wearied of the rolling hours. In glowing health, with boundless wealth, but sickening of a vague disease, You know so ill to deal with time, you needs must play such pranks as these. Clara, Clara Vere de Vere, if time be heavy on your hands, Are there no beggars at your gate, nor any poor about your lands? Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read, oh! teach the orphan-girl to sew, Pray heaven for a human heart, and let the foolish yeoman go. (By permission of Messrs. Moxon and Co.) 5. THE SPANISH CHAMPION. MRS. HEMANS. THE warrior bowed his crested head, and tamed his heart of fire, And sued the haughty king to free his long-imprisoned sire. "I bring thee here my fortress keys, I bring my captive train: I pledge my faith, my liege, my lord, oh! break my father's chain." 66 'Rise, rise! even now thy father comes, a ransomed man this day, Mount thy good steed, and thou and I will meet him on his way. Then lightly rose that loyal son, and bounded on his steed, And lo! from far as on they press'd they met a glittering band He reach'd that gray-haired chieftain's side, and there, dismounting, bent; A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father's hand he took- That hand was cold-a frozen thing; it dropp'd from his like lead: Up from the ground he sprung, and gazed, but who could paint that gaze ? They hush'd their very hearts who saw its horror and amaze; They might have chained him, as before that stony form he stood, For the power was stricken from his arm, and from his cheek the blood. "Father!" at length he murmur'd low, and wept like childhood then Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike menHe thought on all his glorious hopes, on all his young renown, Then flung the falchion from his side, and in the dust sate down; And covering, with his steel-gloved hands, his darkly mournful brow, "No more, there is no more," he said, "to lift the sword for now; My king is false, my hope betray'd, my father, oh! the worth, The glory and the loveliness, are past away from earth!" Up from the ground he sprung once more, and seized the monarch's rein: Amidst the pale and 'wilder'd looks of all the courtier train, The Inchcape Rock. 421 "Came I not here upon thy pledge, my father's hand to kiss? Be still! and gaze thou on, false king, and tell me what is this; The look, the voice, the heart I sought-give answer, where are they? If thou would'st clear thy perjured soul, put life in this cold clay. In to those glassy eyes put light; be still, keep down thine ire, Thou canst not, and, O king! his blood be mountains on thy head!" He loosed the rein, his slack hand fell-upon the silent face, He cast one long, deep, mournful glance, and fled from that sad place; His after fate no more was heard amid the martial train, His banner led the spears no more amidst the hills of Spain! 6. THE INCHCAPE ROCK. R. SOUTHEY. [See p. 110.] No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, Without either sigh or sound of their shock The worthy Abbot of Aberbrothok Had placed that bell on the Inchcape Rock; When the rock was hid by the surge's swell, The sun in heaven was shining gay, The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen His eye was on the Inchcape float; The boat is lower'd, the boatmen row, Down sunk the bell with a gurgling sound, Quoth Sir Ralph, "The next who comes to the rock Sir Ralph the Rover sail'd away, He scour'd the seas for many a day; And now grown rich with plunder'd store, He steers his course for Scotland's shore. So thick a haze o'erspreads the sky On the deck the rover takes his stand, But I wish I could hear the Inchcape bell." They hear no sound, the swell is strong; Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair; Beth Gelert. But even now, in his dying fear One dreadful sound could the rover hear, The fiends in triumph were ringing his knell. 423 7.-BETH GELERT. HON. WM. ROBERT SPENCER [Was the younger son of Lord Charles Spencer, and was educated at Harrow And many a brach, and many a hound, And still he blew a louder blast, "Come, Gelert! why art thou the last "Oh! where doth faithful Gelert roam? The flower of all his race! So true, so brave; a lamb at home, In sooth, he was a peerless hound, But now no Gelert could be found, And now, as over rocks and dells That day Llewellyn little loved Unpleased, Llewellyn homeward hied, But when he gain'd the castle door, The hound was smeared with gouts of gore, |