A FIELD OF BATTLE.

213

8. For a long time these squares stood and let the artillery plow through them. But the fate of Napoleon was writ; and though Ney doubtless did what no other man in the army could have done, the decree could not be reversed. The star, that had blazed so brightly over the world, went down in blood, and the "bravest of the brave" had fought his last battle. It was worthy of his great name; and the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo, with him at their head, will be pointed to by remotest generations with a shudder. J. T. HEADLEY.

LXXXVIII. — A FIELD OF BATTLE.

ZEPH'YR (zef'ur), n., a soft breeze.

EB'ON, a., black like ebony.

POR-TENT'OUS, a., foretokening ill.

IN-E'BRI-ATE, a., drunk.

CLANG'OR (klang'gor), n., a loud, shrill LIN'E-A-MENT, n., outline; feature.

sound.

VER'NAL, a., pertaining to spring.

How beautiful this night! The balmiest sigh Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear Were discord to the speaking quietude

That wraps this moveless scene.

Heaven's ebon vault,

Studded with stars unutterably bright,

Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love has spread
Above the sleeping world.

Ah! whence yon glare,

That fires the arch of heaven?—that dark red smoke,
Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched
In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow
Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round.
Hark to that roar, whose swift and deafening peals
In countless echoes through the mountains ring,
Startling pale midnight on her starry throne!

Now swells the intermingling din; the jar,
Frequent and frightful, of the bursting bomb;

The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the s The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men Inebriate with rage!— Loud and more loud The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the And o'er the conqueror and the conquered dra His cold and bloody shroud!

Of all the men

Whom day's departing beam saw blooming th
In proud and vigorous health, of all the hea
That beat with anxious life at sunset there,—
How few survive! how few are beating now!-
All is deep silence, like the fearful calm
That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause
Save when the frantic wail of widowed love
Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint m
With which some soul bursts from the frame o
Wrapt round its struggling powers.

The gray morn

Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphur-ou
Before the icy wind slow rolls away,

And the bright beams of frosty morning dance
Along the spangled snow. There, tracks of bl
Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms,
And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments
Death's self could change not, mark the dreadf
Of the out-sallying victors. Far behind
Black ashes note where a proud city stood.
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen ;—

Each tree which guards its darkness from the d
Waves o'er a warrior's tomb!

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. (1792

TRUTH, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,

CAUSE FOR INDIAN RESENTMENT.

LXXIX.-CAUSE FOR INDIAN RESENTMENT.

IM-PLA'CA-BLY, ad., irreconcilably.

FE-RO'CIOUS, a., fierce; savage.

VIN-DICTIVE, a., revengeful.
IM'PO-TENCE, n., want of power.

In hov'er, nothing, none, give o the sound of short u as in love, a-bove', &c.

215

1. You say that you have bought the country. Bought it? Yes; - of whom? Of the poor, trembling natives, who knew that refusal would be vain; and who strove to make a merit of necessity, by seeming to yield with grace what they knew that they had not the power to retain.-Alas, the poor Indians! No wonder that they continue so impla'cably vindictive against the white people. No wonder that the rage of resentment is handed down from generation to generation. No wonder that they refuse to associate and mix permanently with their unjust and cruel invaders and exterminators.

2. No wonder that, in the unabating spite and frenzy of conscious impotence, they wage an eternal war, as well as they are able; that they triumph in the rare opportunity of revenge; that they dance, sing, and rejoice, as the victim shrieks and faints amid the flames, when they imagine all the crimes of their oppressors collected on his head, and fancy the spirits of their injured forefathers hovering over the scene, smiling with ferocious delight at the grateful spectacle, and feasting on the precious odor as it arises from the burning blood of the white man.

3. Yet the people here affect to wonder that the Indians are so very unsusceptible of civilization; or, in other words, that they so obstinately refuse to adopt the manners of the white man. Go, Virginians, erase from the Indian nation the tradition of their wrongs. Make them forget, if you can, that once this charming country was theirs; that over these fields, and through

these forests, their beloved forefathers once, less gayety, pursued their sports and hunt game; that every returning day found them t the peaceful and happy proprietors of this e and beautiful domain. Go, administer the cu livion to recollections like these; and then J cease to complain that the Indian refuses to be c 4. But, until then, surely it is nothing w that a nation, even yet bleeding afresh from th ory of ancient wrongs, perpetually agonized outrages, and goaded into desperation and ma the prospect of the certain ruin which awai descendants, should hate the authors of their ies, of their desolation, their destruction, shou their manners, hate their color, hate their la hate their name, hate every thing that belongs t No; never, until time shall wear out the his their sorrows and their sufferings, will the In brought to love the white man, and to imit WILLIAM WIRT. (1772

manners.

XC.-TOO LATE I STAYED.

Too late I stayed — forgive the crime;
Unheeded flew the hours;-

How noiseless falls the foot of Time

That only treads on flowers!

What eye with clear account remarks

The ebbing of his glass,

When all its sands are diamond sparks,
That dazzle as they pass!

Ah! who to sober measurement
Time's happy swiftness brings,

BERNARDO DEL GARPIO.

217

XCI. BERNARDO DEL CARPIO.

, n., a challenge to combat.

EN (yern), v. i., tq long.
EVE, v. i., to deviate.
DE, 2., a Spanish earl.
-DEE', n., a man of rank.
IFF (kā-), n., a base fellow.
ER-ING (pawl-), npr., shifting.

FAL'CHION (fawl'chun), n., a sword.
LORD'LING, n., a petty nobleman.
CHAM'PI-ON, n., the leading com'bat-
ant in a cause.

DUN'GEON, n., a close dark prison.
LOYAL, a., faithful; true.
VAS'SAL, n., a subject; a serf.

nounce Sancho, sank'ko¡ Castile, Kas-teel'. Do not say baird for beard.

g Alfonzo, of Spain, according to the old chronicle, had offered Bernardo del Carmediate possession of the person of his father, the king's prisoner, in exchange for stle of Carpio, held by Bernardo. The latter gave up the stronghold; whereupon ocking king caused the father to be put to death, and his corpse placed on horsein which state it was led out to the son, the trusting Bernardo. In Mrs. Hemans's , Bernardo is represented as letting the false king go free. In Lockhart's ballad, is far the superior in spirit, Bernardo lets the king hear from him again. By a nation of parts of the two ballads (placing that by Mrs. Hemans first), with slight tions, we get a clear story; though chroniclers leave us in the dark as to Ber"s history after the murder of his father.

THE warrior bowed his crested head,
And tamed his heart of fire,

And sued the haughty king to free
His long-imprisoned sire:

}

"I bring thee here my fortress-keys,
I bring my captive train,

I pledge thee faith, my liege, my lord!—
O break my father's chain!"

"Rise, rise! even now thy father comes,
A ransomed man, this day!
Mount thy good horse; and thou and I
Will meet him on his way,"

Then lightly rose that loyal son,

And bounded on his steed,
And urged, as if with lance in rest,
The charger's foamy speed.

And lo! from far, as on they pressed,
There came a glittering band,

With one that 'mid them stately rode.