Gashed and marred his comely face;
Who can know him in his place?

Up and spake two brethren wise:
'Youngest hearts have keenest eyes;
Bird which leaves its mother's nest,
Moults its pinions, moults its crest.
Let us call the Swan-neck here,
She that was his leman dear;
She shall know him in this stound;
Foot of wolf, and scent of hound,
Eye of hawk, and wing of dove
Carry woman to her love.'

Up and spake the Swan-neck high:
'Go! to all your thanes let cry
How I loved him best of all,
I whom men his leman call;
Better knew his body fair

Than the mother which him bare.
When ye lived in wealth and glee,
Then ye scorned to look on me;
God hath brought the proud ones low
After me afoot to go!'

Rousing erne and sallow glede,
Rousing grey wolf off his feed,
Over franklin, earl, and thane,
Heaps of mother-naked slain,
Round the red field tracing slow,
Stooped that Swan-neck white as snow;
Never blushed nor turned away,
Till she found him where he lay ;
Clipped him in her armès fair,
Wrapped him in her yellow hair,
Bore him from the battle-stead,
Saw him laid in pall of lead,
Took her to a minster high,
For Earl Harold's soul to cry.

Charles Kingsley.

179

FAIR INES

OH saw ye not fair Ines?
She's gone into the West,
To dazzle when the sun is down,
And rob the world of rest:
She took our daylight with her,
The smiles that we love best,

With morning blushes on her cheek
And pearls upon her breast.

Oh turn again, fair Ines,

Before the fall of night,

For fear the moon should shine alone, And stars unrivalled bright;

And blessed will the lover be

That walks beneath their light,

And breathes the love against thy cheek I dare not even write!

Would I had been, fair Ines,

That gallant cavalier,

Who rode so gaily by thy side,

And whispered thee so near!

Were there no bonny dames at home,

Or no true lovers here,

That he should cross the seas to win
The dearest of the dear?

I saw thee, lovely Ines,
Descend along the shore,

With bands of noble gentlemen,

And banners waved before;

And gentle youth and maidens gay,
And snowy plumes they wore ;—
It would have been a beauteous dream
-If it had been no more!

Alas, alas, fair Ines,

She went away with song,

With music waiting on her steps,

And shoutings of the throng;

But some were sad, and felt no mirth,
But only music's wrong,

In sounds that sang Farewell, farewell
To her you've loved so long.

Farewell, farewell, fair Ines,
That vessel never bore
So fair a lady on its deck,
Nor danced so light before,-
Alas for pleasure on the sea,
And sorrow on the shore!

The smile that blest one lover's heart

Has broken many more!

Thomas Hood.

180

HOW LORD NAIRN WAS SAVED

As, under eddying Baltic flaws,

Which chase the soft south-west away, Through each rash blossom, flame-like, gnaws

The icy blight of May

So Fortune, with a bitter breath,

(Just as her beauty budded forth),

Swept, cankered into dusty death,

Our white rose of the north.

Whilst names, which seemed oak-rooted in their place,

Like homeless winds, went fleeting into space.

Caerlaverock's halls in silence stand,

And 'Kenmure's lads are men' in vain ;

The best blood of Northumberland

Makes rich the London rain.

In ghastly sympathy with him

Whose feet shall cross its bridge no more,
Dilstone's weird moat, an omen grim,
Flows, dark with phantom gore.

Long shall each Cumbrian boer recall the sign,
Which boded ruin to that ancient line.

A prince, who speaks no English, spares
None that have loyal blood to shed;
Still, not throughout that clique of theirs,
Is English impulse dead.

When to his block the Elector vowed
Bold Nairn's unshrinking head to give,
Stanhope, in generous anger loud,

Swore that his friend should live;
That neither title, pension, place, nor star,
Should buy, from him, that head for Temple-Bar.

Sleek Walpole strove in vain to bring
His bribes to bear; in vain the lout,
Whom Whigs now call an English king,
Threw German oaths about.

Back from the fields of boyhood came
The past, with all its hopes, once more;
The passion of each hard-fought game,
The rustling of the oar,

As, where the yellow river-lilies float,
Round the tall rushes whirled their eager boat.

Once more he sees two lads, at eve,
Who dream of glory, side by side;
Each wild web that their fancies weave,

Too loving then to hide.

Under the whispering elms they walk,

With arms around each other twined,

And, rapt into the future, talk,

To future sorrow blind:

Then pale that well-known face seemed hovering nigh,

And blood-drops fell, as some one raised it high.

'I brook on this point no control,'
He shouted: 'seek not to reply:
For by that God, who made the soul,
I will not have him die.

What, use me, ruthless as a tool,

To slay my earliest friend? Our names Are cut together in the school,

Together at my dame's;

Half of my past is his, half his is mine;
I will not hear it argued,—I resign!'

When that word thundered through the throng
Of supple slaves, they could not choose;
A soldier-statesman he, too strong

For clerks like them to lose.

So Walpole with the heart of stone,
Before that righteous outbreak bent,
And George, like dog forced from his bone,
Growled forth a grim consent.

Our turn will come—we must not then forget
One rebel, true to Eton memories yet.

Sir Francis Doyle.

181

CULLODEN

(Charles Edward at Versailles on the Anniversary of Culloden.)

LET the shadows gather round me
While I sit in silence here,
Broken-hearted, as an orphan
Watching by his father's bier.
Let me hold my still communion
Far from every earthly sound—
Day of penance, day of passion,
Ever as the year comes round;