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WAR SONG.

THE original strain, of which the following stanzas are an imitation, was wont to be sung, with patriotic enthusiasm, by the German and Prussian soldiers, in their encampments, on their marches, and in the field of battle, during the last campaigns of the allies against Bonaparte. This Tyrtean lyric, therefore, contributed, in its day and its degree, to the deliverance of Europe.

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Quelque part que je me tourne,
Tristesse avec moi sejourne;
Tousiours mes tristes espris
Sont d'une frayeur espris.
Si je suis en la campagne
J'oy une mortelle voix,
Le mesme son m'accompagne
Si je suis dedans les bois.

En quelque lieu que je soye
Il n'y entre jamais joye.
Si je vois dans un hostel
C'est un presage mortel.
Si des hommes je m'absente,
Cherchant les lieux esloignez,
Par le hibou qui lamente
Mes malheurs sont temoignés.

Si pres des fleuves j'arrive
Soudain l'eau, laissant la rive,
En fuyant devant mon mal,
Se cache dans son canal.
L'oiseau sur la seiche espine
Sans dire mot est perché,
Et le lieu ou je chemine
Seiche comme il est touché.

Si quelque amy d'aventure,
Plein de pitié, s'aventure
De me venir conforter,
Il sent ses sens transporter
Par une tristesse extreme.
Il sent un ennuy, un soin,
Et le pauvret a lui mesme
De bon confort grand besoin.

Unto whatever part I turn,

Sorrow with me abides;
And, creeping o'er my spirit, still,
A secret terror glides.

A deadly sound is in mine ears,
If in the field I be ;

The self-same sound pursueth still,
When to the woods I flee.

Whatever house I enter in,
Mirth will no longer stay;
A sad presage, whereso I come,
Makes all men haste away.

And if the people's haunts I shun,
Seeking a lonely place,

The owl shrieks out in witness to
My lamentable case.

If to the river side I go,

And stand upon the brink;
Sudden the waters, fleeing me,
Within their channel shrink.

The bird upon the dry thorn sits,
And not a word saith he :
The very pathway, that I tread,
Dries up when touch'd by me.

If any friend perchance do come
In pity of my plight,

To comfort me; he straightway feels
Himself a wretched wight.

A carking care, a woe extreme,
Upon his heart do feed ;
And he himself thenceforth, poor man,
Of comfort much hath need.

This is natural and pathetic. Jan de la Peruse, from the few poems he has left, seems to have been an amiable man, warmly attached to his friends, and not very solicitous to

court the notice of the powerful. I have learnt nothing more concerning him, than that he was born at Angoulême, and died there in 1555, in the prime of his life.

The Twelve Tales of Lyddalcross.

TALE THE FIFTH.

THE MOTHER'S DREAM.

She slept and there was vision'd to her eye
A stately mountain, green it seem'd, and high;
She sought to climb it-lo! a river dark
Roll'd at its foot-there came a gallant bark,
And in the bark were forms the eldest fiend
Had shaped to mock God's image; fierce they lean'd
O'er the ship's side, and, seizing her, rush'd through
The river wave, which kindled as they flew.
Then to the bank came one and laugh'd aloud;
Bright robes he wore, stern was his look and proud,
He stretch'd his arm, and hail'd her for his bride;
The shuddering waters wash'd his robe aside,
And show'd a shape the fiend's tormenting flame
Had sorely vex'd-she shriek'd, and faintness came.
Then shouts she heard, and sound of gladsome song,
And saw a stream of torches flash along.
The feast was spread, the bridal couch prepared,
Dread forms stood round, with naked swords to guard;
Nor look'd she long; one whisper'd in her ear,
Come, climb thy bed-for lo! the bridegroom's near.
She cried to heaven-at once the wedding joy
Was changed to war shout and to funeral cry;
Swords in the air, as sunshine, flash'd and fell,
Then rose all crimson'd-loud came groan and yell,
And from the middle tumult started out

A form that seiz'd her-blow, and shriek, and shout
Came thick behind-down to the Solway flood
Fast was she borne, it seem'd a sea of blood;
She felt it touch her knees, and with a scream
She started back, and waken'd from her dream.

The Fifth Tale was related by a lady. Her voice was slow and gentle, and possessed that devotional Scottish melody of expression which gives so much antique richness and grace to speech. Under the shade of a long veil she sought to conceal a face where early grief had bleached the roses, and impressed a sedate and settled sorrow on a brow particularly white and high. But her eye still retained something of the light of early life, which darkened or brightened as the joys, the sufferings, or the sorrows, of wedded and maternal love, gave a deeper interest or passion to her story.

When woman is young, said she, with a sigh, but not of regret, she loves to walk in the crowded streets, and near the dwellings of menwhen she becomes wiser, has seen the vanities, and drunk of the miseries and woes of life, she chooses her walks in more lonely places, and, seeking converse with her own spirit,

Legend of Ladye Beatrice.

shuns the joy and the mirth of the world. When sorrow, which misses few, had found me out, and made me a mateless bird, I once walked out to the margin of that beautiful sheet of water, the Ladye's Lowe. It was the heart of summer; the hills in which the lake lay embosomed were bright and green; sheep were scattered upon their sides; shepherds sat on their summits; while the grassy sward, descending to the quiet pure water, gave it so much of its own vernal hue, that the eye could not always distinguish where the land and lake met. Its long green water flags, and broad lilies, which lay so flat and so white along the surface, were unmoved, save by the course of a pair of wild swans, which for many years had grazed on the grassy margin, or found food in the bottom of the lake.

This pastoral quietness pertained more to modern than to ancient times. When the summer heat was high,

and the waters of the lake low, the remains of a broken but narrow causeway, composed of square stones, indented in a frame-work of massy oak, might still be traced, starting from a little bay on the northern side, and diving directly towards the centre of the lake. Tradition, in pursuing the history of this causeway, supplied the lake with an island, the island with a tower, and the tower with narratives of perils, and bloodshed, and chivalry, and love. These fireside traditions, varying according to the fancy of the peasantry, all concluded in a story too wild for ordinary belief. A battle is invariably described by some grey-headed narrator, fought on the southern side of the lake, and sufficiently perilous and bloody. A lady's voice is heard, and a lady's form is seen, among the armed men, in the middle of the fight. She is described as borne off towards the causeway by the lord of the tower, while the margin of the water is strewed with dead or dying men. She sees her father, her brother, fall in her defence; her lover, to whom she had been betrothed, and from whom she had been torn, die by her side; and the deep and lasting curse which she denounced against her ravisher, and the tower, and the lake which gave him shelter, is not forgotten, but it is too awful to mingle with the stories of a grave and a devout people. That night, it is said, a voice was heard as of a spirit running round and round the lake, and pronouncing a curse against it; the waters became agitated, and a shriek was heard at midnight. In the morning the castle of the Ladye's Lowe was sunk, and the waters of the lake slept seven fathoms deep over the copestone.

They who attach credence to this wild legend are willing to support it by much curious testimony. They tell that, when the waters are pure in summer time, or when the winter's ice lies clear beneath the foot of the curler, the wails of the tower are distinctly seen without a stone displaced; while those who connect tales of wonder with every remarkable place, say, that once a year the castle arises at midnight from the bosom of the lake, with lights, not like the lights of this world, streaming from loophole and turret, while

on the summit, like a banner spread, stands a lady clad in white, holding her hands to heaven, and shrieking. This vision is said to precede, by a night or two, the annual destruction of some person by the waters of the lake. The influence of this superstition has made the Ladye's Lowe a solitary and a desolate place, has preserved its fish, which are both delicious and numerous, from the fisher's net and hook, and its wild swans from the gun of the fowler. The peasantry seldom seek the solitude of its beautiful banks, and avoid bathing in its waters; and when the winter gives its bosom to the curler or the skater, old men look grave and say, 'The Ladye's Lowe will have its yearly victim; and its yearly victim, tradition tells us, it has ever had since the sinking of the tower.

I had reached the margin of the lake, and sat looking on its wide pure expanse of water. Here and there the remains of an old tree, or a stunted hawthorn, broke and beautified the winding line of its border; while cattle, coming to drink and gaze at their shadows, took away from the awe and solitude of the place. As my eye pursued the sinuous outline of the lake, it was arrested by the appearance of a form, which seemed that of a human being, stretched motionless on the margin. I rose, and, on going nearer, I saw it was a man; the face cast upon the earth, and the hands spread. I thought death had been there; and while I was waving my hand for a shepherd, who sat on the hill-side, to approach and assist me, I heard a groan, and a low and melancholy cry; and presently he started up, and, seating himself on an old tree-root, rested a cheek on the palm of either hand, and gazed intently on the lake. He was a young man; the remains of health and beauty were still about him; but his locks, once curling and long, which maidens loved to look at, were now matted, and wild, and withered; his cheeks were hollow and pale, and his eyes, once the merriest and brightest in the district, shone now with a grey, wild, and unearthly light.

As I looked upon this melancholy wreck of youth and strength, the unhappy being put both hands in the lake, and lifting

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Cursed may'st thou continue, for my sake,
For the sake of those thou hast slain;
For the father who mourn'd for his son,

For the mother who wail'd for her child.
I heard the voice of sorrow on thy banks,
And a mother mourning by thy waters;
I saw her stretch her white hands over thee,
And weep for her fair-hair'd son!

The sound of the song rolled low and melancholy over the surface of the lake. I never heard a sound so dismal. During the third verse, the singer took up water in the hollow of his hand, and threw it on the wind. Then he threw a pebble and a feather into the lake; and, gathering up the dust among the margin stones, strewed it over the surface of the water. When he concluded his wild verses, he uttered a loud cry, and, throwing himself suddenly on his face, spread out his hands, and lay, and quivered, and moaned like one in mortal agony.

A young woman, in widow's weeds, and with a face still deeper in woe

than her mourning dress, now came towards me, along the border of the lake. She had the face and the form of one whom I knew in my youth, the companion of my teens, and the life and love of all who had hearts worth a woman's wish. She was the grace of the preaching, the joy of the dance, through her native valley, and had the kindest and the gayest heart in the wide holms of Annandale. I rode at her wedding, and a gay woman was I; I danced at her wedding as if sorrow was never to come; and when I went to the kirking, and saw her so fair, and her husband so handsome, I said, in the simplicity of my

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