A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown, Where freedom broadens slowly down, From precedent to precedent:
Where faction seldom gathers head;
But, by degrees to fullness wrought, The strength of some diffusive thought Hath time and space to work and spread. Should banded unions persecute Opinion, and induce a time
When single thought is civil crime,
And individual freedom mute;
Though power should make, from land to land,
The name of Britain trebly great-
Though every channel of the State
Should almost choke with golden sand-
Yet waft me from the harbor mouth,
Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky,
And I will see, before I die,
The palms and temples of the South.
-Alfred Tennyson.
E sons of freedom, wake to glory!
Wakrids bid you rise!
Your children, wives, and grandsires hoary,
Behold their tears, and hear their cries!
Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding,
With hireling hosts, a ruffian band,
Affright and desolate the land,
While peace and liberty lie bleeding?
To arms! to arms! ye brave!
Th' avenging sword unsheath;
March on! march on! all hearts resolved
On victory or death.
Now, now the dangerous storm is rolling,
Which treacherous kings confederate raise:
The dogs of war, let loose, are howling,
And lo! our fields and cities blaze;
And shall we basely view the ruin,
While lawless force, with guilty stride,
Spreads desolation far and wide,
With crimes and blood his hands imbruing.
To arms! to arms! ye brave, etc.
O Liberty! can man resign thee,
Once having felt thy generous flame?
Can dungeons, bolts, or bars confine thee!
Or whips thy noble spirit tame?
Too long the world has wept, bewailing
That falsehood's dagger tyrants wield,
But freedom is our sword and shield,
And all their arts are unavailing.
To arms! to arms! ye brave, etc.
-Rouget de Lisle.
The Private of the Buffs; or, The British Soldier in China.
["Some Seiks, and a private of the Buffs having remained behind with the grog-carts, fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next day they were brought before the authorities and ordered to perform Kotou. The Seiks obeyed, but Moyse, the English soldier, declared he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, and was immediately knocked upon the head and his body thrown upon a dunghill."-China Correspondent of the London Times.]
AST night, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaffed, and swore;
A drunken private of the Buffs,
Who never looked before.
To-day, beneath the foeman's frown,
He stands in Elgin's place,
Ambassador from Britain's crown,
And type of all her race.
Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught, Bewildered, and alone,
A heart with English instinct fraught,
He yet can call his own.
Ay, tear his body limb from limb,
Bring cord or ax or flame,
He only knows that not through him
Shall England come to shame.
D'Amid the dances of the sky,
AUGHTER of God! that sits on high
And guidest with thy gentle sway
The planets on their tuneful way;
Sweet Peace! shall ne'er again
The smile of thy most holy face,
From thine ethereal dwelling-place,
Rejoice the wretched, weary race
Of discord-breathing men?
Too long, O gladness-giving Queen!
Thy tarrying in heaven has been ;
Too long o'er this fair blooming world
The flag of blood has been unfurled,
Polluting God's pure day;
Whilst, as each maddening people reels,
War onward drives his scythed wheels,
And at his horses' bloody heels
Shriek Murder and Dismay.
Oft have I wept to hear the cry
Of widow wailing bitterly;
To see the parent's silent tear
For children fallen beneath the spear.
And I have felt so sore
The sense of human guilt and woe,
That I, in Virtue's passioned glow,
Have cursed (my soul was wounded so)
The shape of man I bore!
Then come from thy serene abode,
Thou gladness-giving child of God!
And cease the world's ensanguined strife,
And reconcile my soul to life;
For much I long to see,
Ere I shall to the grave descend,
Thy hand its blessed branch extend,
And to the world's remotest end
Wave Love and Harmony!
- William Tennant.
That fires the arch of heaven?-that dark red smoke
Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched
In darkness, and 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 shout,
The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men
Inebriate with rage-loud, and more loud
The discord grows; till pale death shuts the scene,
And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws
His cold and bloody shroud. Of all the men
Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there,
In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts
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 moan
With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay
Wrapt round its struggling powers.
The gray morn
Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke
Before the icy wind slow rolls away,
And the bright beams of frosty morning dance
Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood
Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms,
And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments
Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path
Of the outsallying victors; far behind,
Black ashes note where their proud city stood.
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen-
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day
Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,
The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade,
And to those royal murderers whose mean thrones
Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,
The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.
Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround
Their palaces, participate the crimes
That force defends, and from a nation's rage
Secure the crown, which all the curses reach
That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe
These are the hired bravos who defend
The tyrant's th.one.
By the kirk and college green,
Rode the laird of Ury;
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.
Flouted him the drunken churl,
Jeered at him the serving girl,
Prompt to please her master;
And the begging carlin, late
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,
Cursed him as he passed her.
Yet with calm and stately mien
Up the streets of Aberdeen
Came he slowly riding;
And to all he saw and heard
Answering not the bitter word,
Turning not for chiding.
Came a troop with broadswords swinging, Bits and bridles sharply ringing,
Loose and free and froward:
Quoth the foremost, "Ride him down!
Push him! prick him! Through the town
Drive the Quaker coward!"
But from out the thickening crowd
Cried a sudden voice and loud:
"Barclay! Ho! a Barclay!"
And the old man at his side
Saw a comrade, battle-tried,
Scarred and sunburned darkly;
Who, with ready weapon bare,
Fronting to the troopers there,
Cried aloud: God save us!
Call ye coward him who stood
Ankle-deep in Lutzen's blood,
With the brave Gustavus?"
"Nay, I do not need thy sword,
Comrade mine," said Ury's lord;
Put it up, I pray thee.
Passive to his holy will,
Trust I in my Master still,
Even though he slay me.
Pledges of thy love and faith, Proved on many a field of death, Not by me are needed."
Marveled much that henchman bold,
That his laird, so stout of old,
Now so meekly pleaded.
"Woe's the day," he sadly said,
With a slowly shaking head,
And a look of pity; "Ury's honest lord reviled, Mock of knave and sport of child,
In his own good city!
"Speak the word, and, master mine,
As we charged on Tilly's line,
And his Walloon lancers, Smiting through their midst, we'll teach Civil look and decent speech
To these boyish prancers!"
"Marvel not, mine ancient friendLike beginning, like the end!"
Quoth the laird of Ury;
"Is the sinful servant more
Than his gracious Lord who bore
Bonds and stripes in Jewry?
"Give me joy that in His name
I can bear, with patient frame,
All these vain ones offer;
While for them He suffered long,
Shall I answer wrong with wrong,
Scoffing with the scoffer?
'Happier I, with loss of allHunted, outlawed, held in thrall,
With few friends to greet me— Than when reeve and squire were seen Riding out from Aberdeen
With bared heads to meet me ;
"When each goodwife, o'er and o'er,
Blessed me as I passed her door;
And the snooded daughter,
Through her casement glancing down,
Smiled on him who bore renown
From red fields of slaughter.
"Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,
Hard the old friends' falling off,
Hard to learn forgiving;
But the Lord his own rewards,
And his love with theirs accords
Warm and fresh and living.
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