Following their dangerous fortunes? If such love With courteous courage and with loyal love. Was planted. It grew up a stately oak, That stately oak, Itself hath moulder'd now, but Sydney's fame Endureth in his own immortal works. EXTRACT FROM RODERICK, THE LAST OF THE GOTHS. A CHRISTIAN woman spinning at her door Did Roderick, reckless of a resting-place, bed On heath and myrtle." S. T. COLERIDGE. TO THE RIVER OTTER. DEAR native Brook! wild Streamlet of the West! I skimm'd the smooth thin stone along thy breast, But straight with all their tints thy waters rise, Thy crossing plank, thy margin's willowy maze, And bedded sand that, vein'd with various dies, Gleam'd thro' thy bright transparence to the gaze! Visions of Childhood! oft have ye beguiled Lone Manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs, Ah! that once more I were a careless Child! A FRAGMENT. O LEAVE the lily on its stem, A cypress and a myrtle bough, This morn around my harp you twined, Because it fashioned mournfully Its murmurs in the wind. And now a tale of love and wo, But most, my own dear Genevieve, It sighs and trembles most for thee! O come and hear what cruel wrongs Befell the dark Ladie. Few sorrows hath she of her own, All thoughts, all passions, all delights, All are but ministers of love, O ever in my waking dreams I dwell upon that happy hour When midway on the mount I sat, Beside the ruin'd tower. The moonshine stealing o'er the scene She lean'd against the armed man, I played a sad and doleful air, I sung an old and moving story; An old rude song that fitted well The ruins wild and hoary. She listened with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes and modest grace, For well she knew I could not choose But gaze upon her face. I told her of the knight who wore I told her how he pined :—and, ah!' The deep, the low, the pleading tone, In which I told another's love, Interpreted my own! She listened with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes and modest grace; But when I told the cruel scorn, That crazed this bold and lovely knight, And how he roamed the mountain woods, Nor rested day nor night: And how he crossed the woodman's path, Through briers and swampy mosses beat, How boughs, resounding, scourged his limbs, And low stubs gored his feet: How sometimes from the savage den, And sometimes from the darksome shade, And sometimes starting up at once In green and sunny glade, There came and looked him in the face An Angel beautiful and bright, And how he knew it was a fiend, This miserable knight ! And how, unknowing what he did, And saved from outrage worse than death And how she wept and clasped his knees, And how she tended him in vain, |