The Poetical Works of Fitz-Greene Halleck

Front matter

THE

POETICAL WRITINGS

OF

Marco Bozzaris

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

MARCO BOZZARIS.1

At midnight, in his guarded tent, The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, Should tremble at his power: In dreams, through camp and court, he bore The trophies of a conqueror; In dreams his song of triumph heard; Then wore his monarch’s signet ring: Then pressed that monarch’s throne—a king; As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, As Eden’s garden bird.

At midnight, in the forest shades, Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, True as the steel of their tried blades, Heroes in heart and hand. There had the Persian’s thousands stood,

There had the glad earth drunk their blood On old Platæa’s day; And now there breathed that haunted air The sons of sires who conquered there, With arm to strike and soul to dare, As quick, as far as they.

An hour passed on—the Turk awoke; That bright dream was his last; He woke—to hear his sentries shriek, “To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!” He woke—to die midst flame, and smoke, And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke, And death-shots falling thick and fast As lightnings from the mountain-cloud; And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Bozzaris cheer his band: “Strike—till the last armed foe expires; Strike—for your altars and your fires; Strike—for the green graves of your sires; God—and your native land!”

They fought—like brave men, long and well; They piled that ground with Moslem slain, They conquered—but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein. His few surviving comrades saw His smile when rang their proud hurrah, And the red field was won;

Then saw in death his eyelids close Calmly, as to a night’s repose, Like flowers at set of sun.

Come to the bridal-chamber, Death! Come to the mother’s, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born’s breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption’s ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean-storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song, and dance and wine; And thou art terrible—the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier; And all we know, or dream, or fear Of agony, are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet’s word; And in its hollow tones are heard The thanks of millions yet to be. Come, when his task of fame is wrought— Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood bought— Come in her crowning hour—and then Thy sunken eye’s unearthly light To him is welcome as the sight

Of sky and stars to prisoned men: Thy grasp is welcome as the hand Of brother in a foreign land; Thy summons welcome as the cry That told the Indian isles were nigh To the world-seeking Genoese. When the land wind, from woods of palm, And orange-groves, and fields of balm, Blew o’er the Haytian seas.

Bozzaris! with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory’s time, Rest thee—there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime. She wore no funeral-weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume Like torn branch from death’s leafless tree In sorrow’s pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb: But she remembers thee as one Long loved and for a season gone; For thee her poet’s lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes’ first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace-couch and cottage-bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;

His plighted maiden, when she fears For him the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears: And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys, And even she who gave thee birth, Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, Talk of thy doom without a sigh: For thou art Freedom’s now, and Fame’s: One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die.

Alnwick Castle

ALNWICK CASTLE.2

Home of the Percy’s high-born race, Home of their beautiful and brave, Alike their birth and burial-place, Their cradle and their grave! Still sternly o’er the castle gate Their house’s Lion stands in state, As in his proud departed hours; And warriors frown in stone on high, And feudal banners “flout the sky” Above his princely towers.

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.

Gaze on the Abbey’s ruined pile: Does not the succoring ivy, keeping Her watch around it, seem to smile, As o’er a loved one sleeping? One solitary turret gray Still tells, in melancholy glory, The legend of the Cheviot day, The Percy’s proudest border story. That day its roof was triumph’s arch; Then rang, from aisle to pictured dome, The light step of the soldier’s march, The music of the trump and drum; And babe, and sire, the old, the young, And the monk’s hymn, and minstrel’s song, And woman’s pure kiss, sweet and long, Welcomed her warrior home.

Wild roses by the Abbey towers Are gay in their young bud and bloom: They were born of a race of funeral-flowers That garlanded, in long-gone hours, A templar’s knightly tomb. He died, the sword in his mailed hand, On the holiest spot of the Blessed land, Where the Cross was damped with his dying breath, When blood ran free as festal wine, And the sainted air of Palestine Was thick with the darts of death.

Wise with the lore of centuries, What tales, if there be “tongues in trees,” Those giant oaks could tell, Of beings born and buried here; Tales of the peasant and the peer, Tales of the bridal and the bier, The welcome and farewell, Since on their boughs the startled bird First, in her twilight slumbers, heard The Norman’s curfew-bell!

I wandered through the lofty halls Trod by the Percys of old fame, And traced upon the chapel walls Each high, heroic name, From him3 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,4 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’s5 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: ’Tis 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.

Burns

BURNS.

TO A ROSE, BROUGHT FROM NEAR ALLOWAY KIRK, IN AYRSHIRE, IN THE AUTUMN OF 1822.

Wild Rose of Alloway! my thanks; Thou ’mindst me of that autumn noon When first we met upon “the banks And braes o’ bonny Doon.”

Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree’s bough, My sunny hour was glad and brief, We’ve crossed the winter sea, and thou Art withered—flower and leaf.

And will not thy death-doom be mine— The doom of all things wrought of clay— And withered my life’s leaf like thine, Wild rose of Alloway?

Not so his memory, for his sake My bosom bore thee far and long, His—who a humbler flower could make Immortal as his song,

The memory of Burns—a name That calls, when brimmed her festal cup, A nation’s glory and her shame, In silent sadness up.

A nation’s glory—be the rest Forgot—she’s canonized his mind; And it is joy to speak the best We may of human kind.

I’ve stood beside the cottage-bed Where the Bard-peasant first drew breath; A straw-thatched roof above his head, A straw-wrought couch beneath.

And I have stood beside the pile, His monument—that tells to Heaven The homage of earth’s proudest isle To that Bard-peasant given!

Bid thy thoughts hover o’er that spot, Boy-minstrel, in thy dreaming hour; And know, however low his lot, A Poet’s pride and power:

The pride that lifted Burns from earth, The power that gave a child of song Ascendency o’er rank and birth, The rich, the brave, the strong;

And if despondency weigh down Thy spirit’s fluttering pinions then, Despair—thy name is written on The roll of common men.

There have been loftier themes than his, And longer scrolls, and louder lyres, And lays lit up with Poesy’s Purer and holier fires:

Yet read the names that know not death; Few nobler ones than Burns are there; And few have won a greener wreath Than that which binds his hair.

His is that language of the heart, In which the answering heart would speak, Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start, Or the smile light the cheek;

And his that music, to whose tone The common pulse of man keeps time, In cot or castle’s mirth or moan, In cold or sunny clime.

And who hath heard his song, nor knelt Before its spell with willing knee, And listened, and believed, and felt The Poet’s mastery:

O’er the mind’s sea, in calm and storm, O’er the heart’s sunshine and its showers, O’er Passion’s moments bright and warm, O’er Reason’s dark, cold hours;

On fields where brave men “die or do,” In halls where rings the banquet’s mirth, Where mourners weep, where lovers woo, From throne to cottage-hearth?

What sweet tears dim the eye unshed, What wild vows falter on the tongue, When “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,” Or “Auld Lang Syne” is sung!

Pure hopes, that lift the soul above, Come with his Cotter’s hymn of praise, And dreams of youth, and truth, and love, With “Logan’s” banks and braes.

And when he breathes his master-lay Of Alloway’s witch-haunted wall, All passions in our frames of clay Come thronging at his call.

Imagination’s world of air, And our own world, its gloom and glee, Wit, pathos, poetry, are there, And death’s sublimity.

And Burns—though brief the race he ran, Though rough and dark the path he trod, Lived—died—in form and soul a Man, The image of his God.

Through care, and pain, and want, and woe, With wounds that only death could heal, Tortures—the poor alone can know, The proud alone can feel;

He kept his honesty and truth, His independent tongue and pen, And moved, in manhood as in youth, Pride of his fellow-men.

Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong, A hate of tyrant and of knave, A love of right, a scorn of wrong, Of coward and of slave;

A kind, true heart, a spirit high, That could not fear and would not bow, Were written in his manly eye And on his manly brow.

Praise to the bard! his words are driven, Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown, Where’er, beneath the sky of heaven, The birds of fame have flown.

Praise to the man! a nation stood Beside his coffin with wet eyes, Her brave, her beautiful, her good, As when a loved one dies.

And still, as on his funeral-day, Men stand his cold earth-couch around, With the mute homage that we pay To consecrated ground.

And consecrated ground it is, The last, the hallowed home of one Who lives upon all memories, Though with the buried gone.

Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines, Shrines to no code or creed confined— The Delphian vales, the Palestines, The Meccas of the mind.

Sages, with wisdom’s garland wreathed, Crowned kings, and mitred priests of power, And warriors with their bright swords sheathed, The mightiest of the hour;

And lowlier names, whose humble home Is lit by fortune’s dimmer star, Are there—o’er wave and mountain come, From countries near and far;

Pilgrims whose wandering feet have pressed The Switzer’s snow, the Arab’s sand, Or trod the piled leaves of the West, My own green forest-land.

All ask the cottage of his birth, Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung, And gather feelings not of earth His fields and streams among.

They linger by the Doon’s low trees, And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr, And round thy sepulchres, Dumfries! The poet’s tomb is there.

But what to them the sculptor’s art, His funeral columns, wreaths and urns? Wear they not graven on the heart The name of Robert Burns?

Wyoming

WYOMING.6

“Dites si la Nature n’a pas fait ce beau pour une Julie, pour une Claire, et pour un St. Preux, mais ne les y cherchez pas.”

Rousseau.

I.

Thou com’st, in beauty, on my gaze at last, “On Susquehanna’s side, fair Wyoming!” Image of many a dream, in hours long past, When life was in its bud and blossoming, And waters, gushing from the fountain-spring Of pure enthusiast thought, dimmed my young eyes, As by the poet borne, on unseen wing, I breathed, in fancy, ’neath thy cloudless skies, The summer’s air, and heard her echoed harmonies.

II.

I then but dreamed: thou art before me now, In life, a vision of the brain no more. I’ve stood upon the wooded mountain’s brow, That beetles high thy lovely valley o’er; And now, where winds thy river’s greenest shore, Within a bower of sycamores am laid; And winds, as soft and sweet as ever bore The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade, Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head.

III.

Nature hath made thee lovelier than the power Even of Campbell’s pen hath pictured: he Had woven, had he gazed one sunny hour Upon thy smiling vale, its scenery With more of truth, and made each rock and tree Known like old friends, and greeted from afar: And there are tales of sad reality, In the dark legends of thy border war, With woes of deeper tint than his own Gertrude’s are.

IV.

But where are they, the beings of the mind, The bard’s creations, moulded not of clay, Hearts to strange bliss and suffering assigned— Young Gertrude, Albert, Waldegrave—where are they? We need not ask. The people of to-day Appear good, honest, quiet men enough, And hospitable too—for ready pay; With manners like their roads, a little rough, And hands whose grasp is warm and welcoming, though tough.

V.

Judge Hallenbach, who keeps the toll-bridge gate, And the town records, is the Albert now Of Wyoming: like him, in church and state, Her Doric column; and upon his brow

The thin hairs, white with seventy winters’ snow, Look patriarchal. Waldegrave ’twere in vain To point out here, unless in yon scare-crow, That stands full-uniformed upon the plain, To frighten flocks of crows and blackbirds from the grain.

VI.

For he would look particularly droll In his “Iberian boot” and “Spanish plume,” And be the wonder of each Christian soul As of the birds that scare-crow and his broom. But Gertrude, in her loveliness and bloom, Hath many a model here; for woman’s eye, In court or cottage, wheresoe’er her home, Hath a heart-spell too holy and too high To be o’erpraised even by her worshipper—Poesy.

VII.

There’s one in the next field—of sweet sixteen— Singing and summoning thoughts of beauty born In heaven—with her jacket of light green, “Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn,” Without a shoe or stocking—hoeing corn. Whether, like Gertrude, she oft wanders there, With Shakespeare’s volume in her bosom borne, I think is doubtful. Of the poet-player The maiden knows no more than Cobbett or Voltaire.

VIII.

There is a woman, widowed, gray, and old, Who tells you where the foot of Battle stepped Upon their day of massacre. She told Its tale, and pointed to the spot, and wept, Whereon her father and five brothers slept Shroudless, the bright-dreamed slumbers of the brave, When all the land a funeral mourning kept. And there, wild laurels planted on the grave By Nature’s hand, in air their pale-red blossoms wave.

IX.

And on the margin of yon orchard hill Are marks where timeworn battlements have been, And in the tall grass traces linger still Of “arrowy frieze and wedgèd ravelin.” Five hundred of her brave that valley green Trod on the morn in soldier-spirit gay; But twenty lived to tell the noonday scene— And where are now the twenty? Passed away. Has Death no triumph hours, save on the battle-day?

On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake

ON THE DEATH OF

,

OF NEW YORK, SEPT., 1820.

“The good die first, And they, whose hearts are dry as summer dust, Burn to the socket.” >>Wordsworth.

Green be the turf above thee, Friend of my better days! None knew thee but to love thee, Nor named thee but to praise.

Tears fell when thou wert dying, From eyes unused to weep, And long, where thou art lying, Will tears the cold turf steep.

When hearts, whose truth was proven, Like thine, are laid in earth, There should a wreath be woven To tell the world their worth;

And I who woke each morrow To clasp thy hand in mine,

Who shared thy joy and sorrow, Whose weal and woe were thine:

It should be mine to braid it Around thy faded brow, But I’ve in vain essayed it, And feel I cannot now.

While memory bids me weep thee, Nor thoughts nor words are free, The grief is fixed too deeply That mourns a man like thee.

Twilight

TWILIGHT.

There is an evening twilight of the heart, When its wild passion-waves are lulled to rest, And the eye sees life’s fairy scenes depart, As fades the daybeam in the rosy west. ’Tis with a nameless feeling of regret We gaze upon them as they melt away, And fondly would we bid them linger yet, But Hope is round us with her angel lay, Hailing afar some happier moonlight hour; Dear are her whispers still, though lost their early power. In youth her cheek was crimsoned with her glow; Her smile was loveliest then; her matin song Was heaven’s own music, and the note of woe Was all unheard her sunny bowers among. Life’s little word of bliss was newly born; We knew not, cared not, it was born to die, Flushed with the cool breeze and the dews of morn, With dancing heart we gazed on the pure sky, And mocked the passing clouds that dimmed its blue, Like our own sorrows then—as fleeting and as few.

And manhood felt her sway too—on the eye, Half realized, her early dreams burst bright, Her promised bower of happiness seemed nigh, Its days of joy, its vigils of delight; And though at times might lower the thunder-storm, And the red lightnings threaten, still the air Was balmy with her breath and her loved form, The rainbow of the heart was hovering there. ’Tis in life’s noontide she is nearest seen, Her wreath the summer flower, her robe of summer green. But though less dazzling in her twilight dress, There’s more of heaven’s pure beam about her now; That angel-smile of tranquil loveliness, Which the heart worships, glowing on her brow; That smile shall brighten the dim evening star That points our destined tomb, nor e’er depart Till the faint light of life is fled afar, And hushed the last deep beating of the heart: The meteor-bearer of our parting breath, A moonbeam in the midnight cloud of death.

Psalm CXXXVII.

PSALM CXXXVII.

“By the rivers of Babylon.”

We sat us down and wept, Where Babel’s waters slept, And we thought of home and Zion as a long-gone, happy dream; We hung our harps in air On the willow-boughs, which there, Gloomy as round a sepulchre, were drooping o’er the stream. The foes whose chain we wore, Were with us on that shore, Exulting in our tears that told the bitterness of woe. “Sing us,” they cried aloud, “Ye once so high and proud, The songs ye sang in Zion ere we laid her glory low.” And shall the harp of heaven To Judah’s monarch given Be touched by captive fingers, or grace a fettered hand?

No! sooner be my tongue Mute, powerless, and unstrung, Than its words of holy music make glad a stranger land. May this right hand, whose skill Can wake the harp at will, And bid the listener’s joys or griefs in light or darkness come, Forget its godlike power, If for one brief, dark hour, My heart forgets Jerusalem, fallen city of my home! Daughter of Babylon! Blessed be that chosen one, Whom God shall send to smite thee when there is none to save: He from the mother’s breast, Shall pluck the babe at rest, And lay it in the sleep of death beside its father’s grave.

To * * * *

TO * * * *.

The world is bright before thee, Its summer flowers are thine, Its calm blue sky is o’er thee, Thy bosom Pleasure’s shrine; And thine the sunbeam given To Nature’s morning hour, Pure, warm, as when from heaven It burst on Eden’s bower.

There is a song of sorrow, The death-dirge of the gay, That tells, ere dawn of morrow, These charms may melt away, That sun’s bright beam be shaded, That sky be blue no more, The summer flowers be faded, And youth’s warm promise o’er.

Believe it not—though lonely Thy evening home may be; Though Beauty’s bark can only Float on a summer sea; Though Time thy bloom is stealing, There’s still beyond his art The wild-flower wreath of feeling, The sunbeam of the heart.

The Field of the Grounded Arms

THE FIELD OF GROUNDED ARMS.

SARATOGA.

Strangers! your eyes are on that valley fixed Intently, as we gaze on vacancy, When the mind’s wings o’erspread The spirit-world of dreams.

True, ’tis a scene of loveliness—the bright Green dwelling of the summer’s first-born Hours, Whose wakened leaf and bud Are welcoming the morn.

And morn returns the welcome, sun and cloud Smile on the green earth from their home in heaven, Even as a mother smiles Above her cradled boy,

And wreath their light and shade o’er plain and mountain, O’er sleepless seas of grass, whose waves are flowers, The river’s golden shores, The forest of dark pines.

The song of the wild bird is on the wind, The hum of the wild bee, the music wild Of waves upon the bank, Of leaves upon the bough.

But all is song and beauty in the land, Beneath her skies of June; then journey on, A thousand scenes like this Will greet you ere the eve.

Ye linger yet—ye see not, hear not now, The sunny smile, the music of to-day, Your thoughts are wandering up, Far up the stream of time;

And boyhood’s lore and fireside-listened tales Are rushing on your memories, as ye breathe That valley’s storied name, Field of the grounded arms.

Strangers no more, a kindred “pride of place,” Pride in the gift of country and of name, Speaks in your eye and step— Ye tread your native land.

And your high thoughts are on her glory’s day, The solemn sabbath of the week of battle, Whose tempests bowed to earth Her foeman’s banner here.

The forest-leaves lay scattered cold and dead, Upon the withered grass that autumn morn, When, with as widowed hearts And hopes as dead and cold,

A gallant army formed their last array Upon that field, in silence and deep gloom, And at their conqueror’s feet Laid their war-weapons down.

Sullen and stern, disarmed but not dishonored; Brave men, but brave in vain, they yielded there: The soldier’s trial-task Is not alone “to die.”

Honor to chivalry! the conqueror’s breath Stains not the ermine of his foeman’s fame, Nor mocks his captive’s doom— The bitterest cup of war.

But be that bitterest cup the doom of all Whose swords are lightning-flashes in the cloud Of the Invader’s wrath, Threatening a gallant land!

His armies’ trumpet-tones wake not alone Her slumbering echoes; from a thousand hills Her answering voices shout, And her bells ring to arms!

Then danger hovers o’er the Invader’s march, On raven wings, hushing the song of fame, And glory’s hues of beauty Fade from the cheek of death.

A foe is heard in every rustling leaf, A fortress seen in every rock and tree, The eagle eye of art Is dim and powerless then,

And war becomes a people’s joy, the drum Man’s merriest music, and the field of death His couch of happy dreams, After life’s harvest-home.

He battles heart and arm, his own blue sky Above him, and his own green land around, Land of his father’s grave, His blessing and his prayers:

Land where he learned to lisp a mother’s name, The first beloved in life, the last forgot, Land of his frolic youth, Land of his bridal eve—

Land of his children—vain your columned strength, Invaders! vain your battles’ steel and fire! Choose ye the morrow’s doom— A prison or a grave.

And such were Saratoga’s victors—such The Yeomen-Brave, whose deeds and death have given A glory to her skies, A music to her name.

In honorable life her fields they trod, In honorable death they sleep below; Their sons’ proud feelings here Their noblest monuments.

Red Jacket

RED JACKET.7

A Chief of the Indian Tribes, the Tuscaroras.

ON LOOKING AT HIS PORTRAIT BY WEIR.

Cooper, whose name is with his country’s woven, First in her files, her Pioneer of mind— A wanderer now in other climes, has proven His love for the young land he left behind;

And throned her in the senate-hall of nations, Robed like the deluge rainbow, heaven-wrought; Magnificent as his own mind’s creations, And beautiful as its green world of thought:

And faithful to the Act of Congress, quoted As law authority, it passed nem. con.: He writes that we are, as ourselves have voted, The most enlightened people ever known:

That all our week is happy as a Sunday In Paris, full of song, and dance, and laugh; And that, from Orleans to the Bay of Fundy, There’s not a bailiff or an epitaph:

And furthermore—in fifty years, or sooner, We shall export our poetry and wine; And our brave fleet, eight frigates and a schooner, Will sweep the seas from Zembla to the Line.

If he were with me, King of Tuscarora! Gazing, as I, upon thy portrait now, In all its medalled, fringed, and beaded glory, Its eye’s dark beauty, and its thoughtful brow—

Its brow, half martial and half diplomatic, Its eye, upsoaring like an eagle’s wings; Well might he boast that we, the Democratic, Outrival Europe, even in our Kings!

For thou wast monarch born. Tradition’s pages Tell not the planting of thy parent tree, But that the forest tribes have bent for ages To thee, and to thy sires, the subject knee.

Thy name is princely—if no poet’s magic Could make Red Jacket grace an English rhyme, Though some one with a genius for the tragic Hath introduced it in a pantomime—

Yet it is music in the language spoken Of thine own land, and on her herald-roll; As bravely fought for, and as proud a token As Cœur de Lion’s of a warrior’s soul.

Thy garb—though Austria’s bosom-star would frighten That medal pale, as diamonds the dark mine, And George the Fourth wore, at his court at Brighton A more becoming evening dress than thine;

Yet ’tis a brave one, scorning wind and weather, And fitted for thy couch, on field and flood, As Rob Roy’s tartan for the Highland heather, Or forest green for England’s Robin Hood.

Is strength a monarch’s merit, like a whaler’s? Thou art as tall, as sinewy, and as strong As earth’s first kings—the Argo’s gallant sailors, Heroes in history and gods in song.

Is beauty?—Thine has with thy youth departed; But the love-legends of thy manhood’s years, And she who perished, young and broken-hearted, Are—but I rhyme for smiles and not for tears.

Is eloquence?—Her spell is thine that reaches The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport; And there’s one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches, The secret of their mastery—they are short.