·

Then rose the hurtling cannon shower along the startled coasts, Then dashed on Lambert's iron-hearts through Leslie's scat

tered posts;

Then rose their cry, "THE COVENANT!" mid sneers, and taunts, and boasts.

"THE LORD OF HOSTS!" our Captain cried: "THE LORD, THE LORD OF HOSTS!"

The Word that healed our aching hearts in many an ancient

scar,-

That was the word by which we fought and conquered at Dunbar.

'Twas when the storm of fight was o'er, the battle almost done, From forth the sea, beyond the rocks, looked up the great red

sun,

Our General saw the flying hosts-"THEY RUN!" he cried, "THEY RUN!

LET GOD ARISE, AND LET HIS FOES BE SCATTERED!"—we had

won.

High o'er the plain his voice arose, we heard it near and far; So our good Lord Protector fought and conquered at Dunbar.

Then, halting on the battle plain, he raised, so clear and loud, A psalm of praise. Its mighty voice peal'd o'er the awe-struck crowd;

The warrior dropped his blood-red sword, the helmèd head was bowed;

It reined at once the mailèd hand and checked the passion

proud;

It still'd the clash of sounding swords; it still'd the passion's

jar ;

Oh, never saw the world a field like that of old Dunbar !

Ah me! ah me! those days are o'er-the days of shame are

here;

Our glorious Cromwell's mangled limbs, our Sydney's bloody

bier;

Our land in chains, our faith proscribed,-forgive this falling

tear;

My heart is strong, my faith is firm, my soul is dead to fear. A sword! a field! who knows but we might see hope's rising star?

A sword! a field! our blow might be as stout as old Dunbar.

No, no! not that, those words are vain. War's bloody blazing star,

It cannot light to freedom's world or melt the dungeon's bar. Swords cannot hew a way for truth,—they cannot make, but

mar;

They cannot shiver nations' chains or dull hearts wake by war. I know-for this right arm was red with conquering near and

far,

And fain would I unfurl again the banner of Dunbar.

NIBLEY, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, 1856.

THE MARTYRDOM OF SIR HARRY VANE.

IT

"Great men have been among us, hands that penned,
And tongues that uttered wisdom-better none,
YOUNG VANE, and others who called Milton friend.
These moralists could act and comprehend:

They knew how genuine glory was put on ;

Taught us how rightfully a nation shone

In splendour: what strength was, that would not bend
But in magnanimous meekness."

-Wordsworth.

T was thought at first that he would have to walk to execu tion; the sledge had not arrived. At length it came, and he said, “Any way, how they please; I long to be at home, to be dissolved, and to be with Christ, which is best of all." He went down stairs from his chamber, and seated himself in the sledge, his friends and servants standing by him, and Sykes, his friend and biographer, accompanying him to the close. As they passed along, it was like a royal procession; shouts and gestures were made to him; the tops of the houses were crowded, and all the windows thronged; even the prisoners of the Tower, as he passed along, and the thronging multitudes by his side, and the people looking down on the procession, exclaimed, "The Lord go with you; the great God of heaven and earth appear in you and for you." As he came within the rails of the scaffold, the pathetic voices of the people greeted him with like acclamations, crying out, "The Lord Jesus be with thy dear soul.”

His last words were, "Father, glorify Thy servant in the sight of men, that he may glorify Thee, in the discharge of his duty to Thee and to his country." Thereupon he stretched out his arms, in an instant swift fell the stroke, and the head of one of the greatest and purest beings that ever adorned our world

rolled on the scaffold. So Sir Harry went away in his chariot to Heaven; and Pepys tells us how he "went away to dinner!” A day or two after, he tells us how “the talk was that Sir Harry Vane must be gone to Heaven, and that the King had lost more by that man's death than he will gain again a good while.” Sykes beautifully and pathetically says, "Cromwell's victories are swallowed up of death; Vane has swallowed up death itself in victory. He let fall his mantle, left his body behind him, that he had worn for nine-and-forty years, and has gone to keep his everlasting jubilee in God's everlasting rest. It is all day with him now,-no night nor sorrow more; no prison, nor death !"

Ho! Freemen of London, awake from your sleep!
Ho! Freemen ! your slumbers are surely not deep!
Awake! there is treason afloat on the air.
The morning is bright and the heavens are fair,
But dark are the omens that mantle around,
There is boding and dread in each murmuring sound.
What turret gives yonder the boom of the bell?
'Tis the toll from the Tower, it is Liberty's knell,
And the sun should be curtain'd in darkness and rain,
For the day wakens up o'er the Scaffold of VANE.

'Twas the day when our Nero was throned for a king,
If Nero be named by so shameless a thing ;-
When the land, like a lazar-house, lay in despair,
And vice, like a pestilence, haunted the air.

Not long since the bloodhounds lay chained in despair,
The lion was monarch; they shrank from his lair.
The lion was dead, but the bloodhounds for prey
Made a feast of the monarch who held them at bay ;
But, to freshen their fangs with a blood rich in stain,

They howled and they leaped round the Scaffold of VANE.

'Twas his morning of death, but he lay in a sleep,
Like the slumbers of infancy, tranquil and deep;
And his face in his slumber reflected the light
Of the phantoms that passed by his pillow at night.

Sleep on! 'tis thy last sleep-no more shall thine eye
Close on scenes of the earth till it wakes to the sky;
So freshen thy spirit, brave soldier, to bear

The last frown of sorrow, the last glance of care;
And gird up thy spirit to front thy last pain,
And let Time point with pride to the Scaffold of VANE.
Thro' the mind of the dreamer the shades of the past
Were crowding and flitting so thronging and fast :
Now the far Susquehanna's bright forests were seen,
And the camps of the wilderness, glowing and green.
He remembered the days of his youth; but no sigh
Proclaimed that remorse or confusion stood by.
He can look on the past, but his spirit is still;
He has mounted his Pisgah, and far o'er the hill
He beholds the contentions with sorrow, but joy,
For the soul is erect, and they cannot annoy.
The winds they blow keen from the past, but in vain ;
They chill not the spirit or vision of VANE.

He dreamed he was borne in his slumbers away
To the proud hall of Rufus, so hoary and gray;
Whose rafters resounded, long ages agone,
To the shout and the wassail, the Conqueror's song.
And he saw as he saw it when spread for the doom
Of the King, and the judgment hung dark o'er the room;
And the phantoms of Cromwell and Bradshaw were there,
As if living, unshaken, unshadowed by care.

And the King smiled in kindness, though sad as the day,
On the couch where the sleeper so peacefully lay.

It was but a moment, it brightened again,

And the sun shone in light round the Visions of VANE.

*

'Tis the first in the long Saturnalia of Blood;

The Tiger is back, he is crying for food.

The tongue of the Stuart is thirsting for gore,

And the sweet taste of this shall give relish for more.
For this shall his name, stiff with treason, go down
With a stain on his robe and a curse on his crown,