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Summoned to pass the spacious realms of time,
Their leader the Almighty. In that march,
Ah! who may quit his post? when high in air
The chosen archangel rides, whose right hand wields
The imperial standard of Heaven's providence,
Which, dreadful sweeping through the vaulted sky,
O'ershadows all creation.

Richard Glover.

BO ADICЕА.

Solitude on a Battle-Field.

I HAVE been led by solitary care

To yon dark branches, spreading o'er the brook
Which murmurs through the camp; this mighty camp,
Where once two hundred thousand sons of war,
With restless dins, awaked the midnight hour.
Now horrid stillness in the vacant tents

Sits undisturbed; and these incessant rills,
Whose pebbled channel breaks their shallow stream,
Fill with their melancholy sounds my ears,

As if I wandered, like a lovely hind,

O'er some dead fallow, far fom all resort:
Unless that ever and anon a groan
Bursts from a soldier, pillowed on his shield
In torment, or expiring with his wounds,
And turns my fixed attention into horror.

Forgiveness.

So prone to error is our mortal frame,

Time could not step without a trace of horror,

If wary nature on the human heart,
Amid its wild variety of passions,

Had not impressed a soft and yielding sense,
That when offences give resentment birth,
The kindly dews of penitence may raise
The seeds of mutual mercy and forgiveness.

....

David Mallet.

ALFRED THE GREAT.

Fortitude.

BUT, prince, remember then

The vows, the noble tears of affliction ;
Preserve the quick humanity it gives,
The pitying, social sense of human weakness;
Yet keep thy stubborn fortitude entire.
The manly heart that to another's woe

Is tender, but superior to its own.

Learn to submit, yet learn to conquer fortune;
Attach thee firmly to the virtuous deeds
And offices of life; to life itself,

With all its vain and transient joys, sit loose.
Chief, let devotion to the sovereign mind,
A steady, cheerful, absolute dependence
In his best, wisest government, possess thee.
In thoughtless gay prosperity, when all

Attends our wish, when naught is seen around us
But kneeling slavery, and obedient fortune;
Then are blind mortals apt within themselves
To fly their stay, forgetful of the Giver;

But when thus humbled, Alfred, as thou art,
When to their feeble natural powers reduced,
'Tis then they feel this universal truth,
That Heaven is all in all, and man is nothing.

Henry Brooke.

GUSTAVUS VASA; OR, THE DELIVERER OF HIS COUNTRY.

GUSTAVUS VASA, King of Sweden, escapes from the hands of CHRISTIERN, King of Denmark (who had reduced Sweden), and prevails upon the Dalecarlians to throw off the Danish yoke. He finally overthrows the Usurper, and delivers his Country.

Mountains of Dalecarlia.-Enter GUSTAVUS as a peasant;
SIVARD and Dalecarlians following.

Gust. Ye men of Sweden, wherefore are ye come?
See ye not yonder, how the locusts swarm,
To drink the fountains of your honour up,
And leave your hills a desert? Wretched men!
Why came ye forth? Is this a time for sport?
Or are ye met with song and jovial feast,

To welcome your new guests, your Danish visitants?
To stretch your supple necks beneath their feet,
And fawning lick the dust ?—Go, go, my countrymen,
Each to your several mansions; trim them out;
Cull all the tedious earnings of your toil,

To purchase bondage. Bid your blooming daughters,

And your chaste wives, to spread their beds with softness;

Then go ye forth, and with your proper hands

Conduct your masters in; conduct the sons

Of lust and violation-O Swedes! Swedes!
Heavens! are ye men, and will ye suffer this?
There was a time, my friends, a glorious time!
When, had a single man of your forefathers
Upon the frontier met a host in arms,

His courage scarce had turned; himself had stood,
Alone had stood, the bulwark of his country.
Come, come ye on, then. Here I take my stand!
Here on the brink, the very verge of liberty;
Although contention rise upon the clouds,

Mix heaven with earth, and roll the ruin onward,
Here will I fix, and breast me to the shock,
Till I or Denmark fall.

Shall we not strike for't?

Siv. Death! Victory or death!

All. No bonds! no bonds!

Arn. Spoke like yourselves. Ye men of Dalecarlia, Brave men and bold! whom every future age

Shall mark for wondrous deeds, achievements won

From honour's dangerous summit, warriors all!

Say, might ye choose a chief—

Speak, name the man

Who then should meet your wish!

Siv. Forbear the theme.

Why wouldst thou seek to sink us with the weight

Of grievous recollection?

O Gustavus !

Could the dead wake, thou wert the man.

Gust. Didst thou know Gustavus?

Siv. Know him! O Heaven! what else, who else was worth

The knowledge of a soldier? That great day,

When Christiern, in his third attempt on Sweden,

Had summed his powers, and weighed the scale of fight;

On the bold brink, the very push of conquest,
Gustavus rushed, and bore the battle down;
In his full sway of prowess, like Leviathan,
That scoops his foaming progress on the main,
And drives the shoals along-forward I sprung,
All emulous, and labʼring to attend him;
Fear fled before, behind him rout grew loud,
And distant wonder gazed. At length he turned,
And, having eyed me with a wondrous look

Of sweetness mixed with glory-grace inestimable !
He plucked this bracelet from his conquering arm,
And bound it here. My wrist seemed treble nerved:
My heart spoke to him, and I did such deeds

As best might thank him.—But from that blessed day
I never saw him more- -yet still to this

I bow, as to the relics of my saint:
Each morn I drop a tear on every bead,
Count all the glories of Gustavus o'er,
And think I still behold him.

Gust. Rightly thought;

For so thou dost, my soldier.
Behold your general,

Gustavus! come once more to lead you on
To laurelled victory, to fame, to freedom!
Siv. Strike me, ye powers !—It is illusion all !
It cannot-

-It is, it is!

[Falls and embraces his knees.

Gust. Oh, speechless eloquence!

Rise to my arms, my friend.

Siv. Friend! say you

friend?

O, my heart's lord! my conqueror ! my――

Gust. Approach, my fellow-soldiers, your Gustavus Claims no precedence here.

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