Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Owning her weakness,

› Her evil behaviour,

And leaving, with meekness,

Her sins to her Saviour !

A PARENTAL ODE TO MY SON, AGED THREE YEARS AND FIVE MONTHS.

Thou happy, happy elf!

(But stop,-first let me kiss away that tear)—
Thou tiny image of myself!

(My love, he's poking peas into his ear!)
Thou merry, laughing sprite !

With spirits feather-light,

Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin-
(Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin !)

Thou little tricksy Puck!

With antic toys so funnily bestuck,

Light as the singing bird that wings the air-
(The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!)
Thou darling of thy sire!

(Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore a-fire!)

Thou imp of mirth and joy!

In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a link,
Thou idol of thy parents-(Drat the boy!
There goes my ink!)

Thou cherub-but of earth;

Fit playfellow for Fays, by moonlight pale,
In harmless sport and mirth,

(That dog will bite him if he pulls its tail!)

Thou human humming-bee extracting honey
From ev'ry blossom in the world that blows,
Singing in Youth's Elysium ever sunny,
(Another tumble !-that's his precious nose!)

Thy father's pride and hope!

(He'll break the mirror with that skipping-rope !) With pure heart newly stamped from Nature's mint(Where did he learn that squint ?)

Thou young domestic dove !

(He'll have that jug off, with another shove !) Dear nurseling of the hymeneal nest!

(Are those torn clothes his best!)

Little epitome of man!

(He'll climb upon the table, that's his plan !) Touched with the beauteous tints of dawning life— (He's got a knife!)

Thou enviable being!

No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing,
Play on, play on,

My elfin John !

Toss the light ball-bestride the stick

(I knew so many cakes would make him sick!)
With fancies buoyant as the thistle down,
Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk,
With many a lamb-like frisk,

(He's got the scissors, snipping at your gown!)

Thou pretty opening rose!

(Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose !)
Balmy, and breathing music like the South,
(He really brings my heart into my mouth!)
Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star,—
(I wish that window had an iron bar!)
Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove,-
(I tell you what, my love,

I cannot write, unless he's sent above!)

THE DEATH-BED.

We watched her breathing thro' the night,
Her breathing soft and low,

As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seemed to speak,
So slowly moved about,

As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,

Our fears our hopes belied-
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.

For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,

Her quiet eyelids closed-she had
Another morn than ours.

LORD MACAULAY.

[THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, Oct. 25, 1800, and died at Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, Dec. 28, 1859. His Lays of Ancient Rome were published in 1843; other ballads and poems were written from time to time, his earliest published piece, an Epitaph Henry Marty, being dated 1812]

On

'You are very right in admiring Macaulay,' wrote Miss Elizabeth Barrett to Mr. Horne in 1843; 'he has a noble, clear, metallic note in his soul, and makes us ready by it for battle. I very much admire Mr. Macaulay, and could scarcely read his ballads and keep lying down. They seemed to draw me up to my feet as the mesmeric powers are said to do.' This testimony from so competent a judge as Mrs. Browning is all the more valuable because, great as is still the popularity of the Lays with the mass of those who read poetry, the higher critical authorities have pronounced against them, and are even teaching us to wonder whether they can be called poetry at all. They find in the Lays the same faults which mar the author's prose-commonplaceness of ideas, cheapness of sentiment and imagery, made to prevail by dint of the writer's irresistible command of a new rhetorical force; in a word, eloquent Philistinism. Against this too exclusive judgment it is well to set Miss Barrett's frank recognition of the power, the spirit, the vividness of historical imagination that informs all Macaulay's writing. One of her epithets, which she uses honoris causâ, we may accept as fairly characterising the evil element in his mind— the epithet metallic. His ballads have the clear resonance of the trumpet they have its hardness too.

The Lays are in everybody's hands: and they do not lend themselves easily to selection. We have preferred to print the less known Naseby, written in 1824; and the pathetic Epitaph on a Jacobite a work of the author's maturity.

EDITOR.

1 Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, vol. i. p. 166.

THE BATTLE OF NASEBY.

(By Obadiah Bind-their-kings-in-chains-and-their-nobles-withlinks-of-iron, Sergeant in Ireton's Regiment.)

Oh! wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North,
With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red?
And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout?
And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?
Oh evil was the root, and bitter was the fruit,

And crimson was the juice of the vintage that we trod;
For we trampled on the throng of the haughty and the strong,
Who sate in the high places, and slew the saints of God.

It was about the noon of a glorious day of June,

That we saw their banners dance, and their cuirasses shine, And the Man of Blood was there, with his long essenced hair, And Astley, and Sir Marmaduke, and Rupert of the Rhine.

Like a servant of the Lord, with his Bible and his sword,
The General rode along us to form us to the fight,
When a murmuring sound broke out, and swelled into a shout
Among the godless horsemen upon the tyrant's right.

And hark! like the roar of the billows on the shore,
The cry of battle rises along their charging line!

For God! for the Cause! for the Church! for the Laws!
For Charles King of England, and Rupert of the Rhine!

The furious German comes, with his clarions and his drums,
His bravoes of Alsatia, and pages of Whitehall;
They are bursting on our flanks. Grasp your pikes, close your
ranks;

For Rupert never comes but to conquer or to fall.

They are here! They rush on! We are broken! We are gone! Our left is borne before them like stubble on the blast.

O Lord, put forth thy might! O Lord, defend the right ! Stand back to back, in God's name, and fight it to the last.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »