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 'mid 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, when she feels,
For the first time, her first-born's breath ;-
Come when the blesséd seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake's 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!

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, his sword in his mailéd hand,

On the holiest spot of the Blesséd 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 him 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, 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's 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:

1 Hugh, Earl Percy, here referred to, rose to be something more than a major. Born in 1742, and educated at Eton College, he married, unhappily (1764), a daughter of the Earl of Bute; and in 1774 was sent to the American colony. In letters to his father, the Duke of Northumberland, he writes of the country about Boston: "Nature has herself done the work of the landscape gardener; but the climate is more trying than that of England. I have been (July) in both the torrid and frigid zone in the space of twenty-four hours. Sometimes my shirt is a burden; again I need a blanket." The earl, while in Boston, occupied a fine house at the corner of Winter and Tremont streets. In the skirmish at Lexington he covered the retreat of Pitcairn's column, and showed both courage and generalship. He was the father of Thomas Smithson, who was born out of wedlock, and who founded the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, D. C.

Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglas 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.

A native of Berlin, Conn., son of a country physician, Percival (1795-1857) entered Yale College at sixteen, and, on graduating, began the study of medicine. He tried to establish himself in his profession at Charleston, S. C., but failed, and turned his attention to literature. In 1827 he revised the translation of Malte Brun's "Geography," and assisted Noah Webster in his "Dictionary." In both instances he quarrelled with his employers. He became a skilful geologist, and was employed in surveys by the States of Connecticut and Wisconsin. His poetry was not a source of profit to him, and he was always poor. An carnest student, he became quite an accomplished linguist. Constitutionally melancholy, he was shy of social distinction, and made few personal friends. His scholarship was remarkable, but unfruitful.

He

481

must be ranked among the true, natural poets, though there has been a disposition to underrate him among the admirers of the most modern fashion in verse. But had Percival been favored in his pecuniary circumstances, he might have left a far more imposing poetical record than he has; for there are evidences of high art, as well as flashes of genius, in some of his latest productions. An edition of his poems in two volumes was published in 1870 in Boston.

ELEGIAC.

FROM CLASSIC MELODIES."

Oh, it is great for our country to die, where ranks are contending!

Bright is the wreath of our fame; Glory awaits us for aye,

Glory that never is dim, shining on with a light never ending,-—

Glory that never shall fade, never, oh never away!

Oh, it is sweet for our country to die! How softly reposes

Warrior youth on his bier, wet by the tears of his love,

Wet by a mother's warm tears. They crown him with garlands of roses,

Weep, and then joyously turn, bright where he triumphs above.

Not to the shades shall the youth descend, who for country hath perished:

Hebe awaits him in heaven, welcomes him there

with her smile;

There, at the banquet divine, the patriot spirit is cherished;

Gods love the young, who ascend pure from the funeral pile.

Not to Elysian fields, by the still, oblivious river; Not to the isles of the blessed, over the blue-roll

ing sea;

But on Olympian heights shall dwell the devoted forever;

There shall assemble the good, there the wise, valiant, and free.

Oh, then, how great for our country to die, in the front rank to perish,

Firm with our breast to the foe, victory's shout in our ear!

Long they our statues shall crown, in songs our memory cherish;

We shall look forth from our heaven, pleased the sweet music to hear.