THE ASSASSINATION.

THE other evening ('twas on Friday last)-
This is a fact, and no poetic fable-
Just as my great coat was about me cast,
My hat and gloves still lying on the table,
I heard a shot-'twas eight o'clock scarce past-
And, running out as fast as I was able,

I found the military commandant

Stretch'd in the street, and able scarce to pant.

Poor fellow for some reason, surely bad,

They had slain him with five slugs; and left him there To perish on the pavement: so I had

Him borne into the house and up the stair,

And stripp'd, and look'd to,--But why should I add
More circumstances? vain was every care;
The man was gone: in some Italian quarrel
Kill'd by five bullets from an old gun-barrel.

I gazed upon him, for I knew him well;

And though I have seen many corpses, never

Saw one, whom such an accident befell,

So calm; though pierced through stomach, heart, and liver, He seem'd to sleep,-for you could scarcely tell

(As he bled inwardly, no hideous river

Of gore divulged the cause) that he was dead:

So as I gazed on him, I thought or said—

"Can this be death? then what is life or death?

Speak!" but he spoke not: "wake!" but still he slept :"But yesterday and who had mightier breath?

A thousand warriors by his word were kept

In awe he said, as the centurion saith,

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Go,' and he goeth; come,' and forth he stepp'd.
The trump and bugle till he spake were dumb-
And now nought left him but the muffled drum."
And they who waited once and worshipp'd-they
With their rough faces throng'd about the bed
To gaze once more on the commanding clay
Which for the last, though not the first time, bled:
And such an end! that he who many a day
Had faced Napoleon's foes until they fled,---
The foremost in the charge or in the sally,
Should now be butcher'd in a civic alley.

LOVE AND GLORY.

O LOVE! O Glory! what are ye who fly
Around us ever, rarely to alight?

There's not a meteor in the polar sky

Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight.

Chill, and chained to cold earth, we lift on high
Our eyes in search of either lovely light;
A thousand and a thousand colours they
Assume, then leave us on our freezing way.

AULD LANG SYNE.

AND all our little feuds, at least all mine,
Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe
(As far as rhyme and criticism combine

To make such puppets of us things below),
Are over: Here's a health to "Auld Lang Syne!"
I do not know you, and may never know
Your face-but you have acted on the whole
Most nobly, and I own it from my soul.

And when I use the phrase of " Auld Lang Syne!"
"Tis not address'd to you-the more's the pity

For me, for I would rather take my wine

With you, than aught (save Scott) in your proud city.
But somehow,-it may seem a schoolboy's whine,
And yet I seek not to be grand nor witty,

But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred

A whole one, and my heart flies to my head,

As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all,
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and clear streams,
The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall,

All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall,
Like Banquo's offspring-floating past me seems
My childhood in this childishness of mine:

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I care not-'tis a glimpse of Auld Lang Syne."

And though, as you remember, in a fit

Of wrath and rhyme, when juvenile and curly, I rail'd at Scots to show my wrath and wit,

Which must be own'd was sensitive and surly,

Yet 'tis in vain such sallies to permit,

They cannot quench young feelings fresh and early. I "scotch'd not kill'd" the Scotchman in my blood, And love the land of "mountain and of flood."

THE BLACK FRIAR.

BEWARE! beware! of the Black Friar,

Who sitteth by Norman stone,

For he mutters his prayer in the midnight air,
And his mass of the days that are gone.

When the Lord of the Hill, Amundeville,
Made Norman Church his prey,

And expell'd the friars, one friar still
Would not be driven away.

Though he came in his might, with King Henry's right,
To turn church lands to lay,

With sword in hand, and torch to light
Their walls, if they said nay;

A monk remained, unchased, unchained,
And he did not seem form'd of clay,

For he's seen in the porch, and he's seen in the church,
Though he is not seen by day.

And whether for good, or whether for ill,

It is not mine to say;

But still with the house of Amundeville

He abideth night and day.

By the marriage-bed of their lords, 'tis said,
He flits on the bridal eve:

And 'tis held as faith, to their bed of death
He comes-but not to grieve.

When an heir is born, he's heard to mourn,
And when aught is to befall

That ancient line, in the pale moonshine
He walks from hall to hall.

His form you may trace, but not his face,

'Tis shadow'd by his cowl:

But his eyes may be seen from the folds between,
And they seem of a parted soul.

But beware! beware! of the Black Friar,
He still retains his sway,

For he is yet the church's heir,
Whoever may be the lay.
Amundeville is lord by day,

But the monk is lord by night;

Nor wine nor wassail could raise a vassal
To question that friar's right.

Say nought to him as he walks the hall,
And he'll say nought to you;

He sweeps along in his dusky pall,

As o'er the grass the dew.

Then grammercy! for the Black Friar;

Heaven sain him! fair or foul,

And whatsoe'er may be his prayer,

Let ours be for his soul.

NORMAN OR NEWSTEAD ABBEY.

To Norman Abbey whirl'd the noble pair,-
An old, old monastery once, and now
Still older mansion,-of a rich and rare
Mix'd Gothic, such as artists all allow
Few specimens yet left us can compare
Withal: it lies perhaps a little low,

Because the monks preferr'd a hill behind,
To shelter their devotion from the wind.

It stood embosom'd in a happy valley,

Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak Stood like Caractacus in act to rally

His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunderstroke;
And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally
The dappled foresters-as day awoke,

The branching stag swept down with all his herd,
To quaff a brook which murmur'd like a bird.
Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,

Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed
By a river, which its soften'd way did take
In currents through the calmer water spread
Around the wildfowl nestled in the brake

And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed;
The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fix'd upon the flood.

Its outlet dash'd into a deep cascade,

Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding,
Its shriller echoes-like an infant made
Quiet-sank into softer ripples, gliding

Into a rivulet; and thus allay'd,

Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, According as the skies their shadows threw.

A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile

(While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart In a grand arch, which once screen'd many an aisle. These last had disappear'd-a loss to art:

The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil,

And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,

Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's march, In gazing on that venerable arch.

Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle,

Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in store;

But these had fallen, not when the friars fell,

But in the war which struck Charles from his throne,

When each house was a fortalice-as tell

The annals of full many a line undone,

The gallant cavaliers, who fought in vain
For those who knew not to resign or reign.

But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd,

The Virgin Mother of the God-born Child, With her Son in her blessed arms, look'd round,

Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd;
She made the earth below seem holy ground.
This may be superstition, weak or wild,

But even the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.

A mighty window, hollow in the centre,

Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,
Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter;
Streaming from off the sun like seraph's wings,
Now yawns all desolate: now loud, now fainter,
The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sings
The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire
Lie with their hallelujahs quench'd like fire.
But in the noontide of the moon, and when
The wind is winged from one point of heaven,
There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then
Is musical-a dying accent driven

Through the huge arch, which soars and sings again.
Some deem it but the distant echo given
Back to the night wind by the waterfall,
And harmonized by the old choral wall:

Others, that some original shape, or form

Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power
(Though less than that of Memnon's statue, warm
In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fix'd hour)
To this grey ruin, with a voice to charm.

Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower;
The cause I know not, nor can solve; but such
The fact:-I've heard it,- -once perhaps too much.
Amidst the court a Gothic fountain play'd,

Symmetrical, but deck'd with carvings quaintStrange faces, like to men in masquerade,

And here perhaps a monster, there a saint: The spring gush'd through grim mouths of granite made, And sparkled into basins, where it spent

Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles,

Like man's vain glory, and his vainer troubles.

The mansion's self was vast and venerable,
With more of the monastic than has been

Elsewhere preserved: the cloisters still were stable,
The cells, too, and refectory, I ween;

An exquisite small chapel had been able,

Still unimpair'd, to decorate the scene;

The rest had been reform'd, replaced, or sunk,
And spoke more of the baron than the monk.

Huge halls, long galleries, spacious chambers, join'd
By no quite lawful marriage of the arts,
Might shock a connoisseur; but when combined,
Form'd a whole, which, irregular in parts,

Yet left a grand impression on the mind,

At least of those whose eyes are in their hearts.