The noble Gardiner, bold of soul,
Saw, spirit-sunk, his dastards flee,* Disdain'd to let a fear control, And, striving by the side of thee, Fell, like a champion of the free! And Brymer, too, who scorn'd to yield, Here took his death-blow undismay'd, And, sinking slowly downward, laid His back upon the field.
Descendant of a royal line—
A line unfortunate and brave!
Success a moment seemed to shine
On thee 'twas sunbeams on a grave!
Thy home a hiding-place-a cave,
With foxes destined soon to be!
To sorrow and to suffering wed, A price on thy devoted head, And blood-hounds tracking thee!
"Twas morn; but ere the solar ray Shot, burning, from the west abroad, The field was still; the soldier lay Beneath the turf on which he trod, Within a cold and lone abode,
Beside the spot whereon he fell;
For ever sever'd from his kind,
And from the home he left behind-
His own paternal dell!
Sheathed in their glittering panoply,
Or wrapt in war-cloak, blood-besprent, Within one common cemetery,
The lofty and the low were pent:
No longer did the evening tent
Their mirth and wassail-clamour hear:
Ah! many a maid of ardent breast
Shed for his sake, whom she loved best, The heart-consuming tear!
Thou, lonely tree, survivest still—
Thy bloom is white, thy leaf is green; I hear the tinkling of a rill;
All else is silent: and the scene,
Where battle raged, is now serene Beneath the purple fall of night. Yet oft, beside the plough, appear, Casque, human bone, and broken spear, Sad relics of the fight!
The scout, the scart, the cattiwake,
The solan-goose sits on the laik,
Yearly in the spring.
RAY'S ITINERARIES, (1661.)
'Twas Summer's depth; a more enlivening sun
Never drank up the gelid morning dews,
Or crimsoned with its glow the July flowers,
Than that on which our boat, with oar and sail,
Left Canta Bay, with its embosomed huts,
And through the freshening tide, with eager prow,
Bore onward to thy rocks, horrific Bass!
Light blew the breeze, the billows curled around;
'Mid clouds of sea-fowl, whose unceasing screams
Uncouth filled all the empty heavens with sound,
Forward we clove: at times the solan's wing,
As if to show its majesty of strength,
Brushed near us with a roughly winnowing noise;
And now, aloft, a lessening speck, was seen
Over the cloudlets, 'mid engulfing blue.
Around us, and around, the plovers wheeled
In myriads, restless, multitudinous,
Wedge-like, at intervals their inner plumes
Glancing like silver in the sunny ray;
The parrot dived beside us; slowly past
Floated the graceful eider-duck; with shrieks
The snipe zig-zagg'd, then vanished in alarm;
And all in air and ocean seemed astir ;
Until the sole and narrow landing-place"
We reached, and, grappling with the naked crags,
Wound to a smoother ledge our sheer ascent.
Never was transit more electrical!
An hour ago, and by thy traceried walls
We drove, Newbyth, beneath the o'erhanging boughs
Of forests old, wherein the stock-dove plained
In sequestration; while the rabbit, scared,
Took to its hole under the hawthorn's root;
And lay our path through bright and bloomy fields,
Where, from the scented clover to the cloud,
Arose the lyric lark on twinkling wings;
And linnets from each brake responsively
Piped to each other, till the shady groves
Of Tyningham seemed melody's abode.
Everything breathed of happiness and life,
Which in itself was joy; the hill-side farms
Basked in the sunshine with their yellow cones
Of gathered grain; the ploughboy with his team
Stalked onward whistling; and, from cottage roofs,
Bluely ascended to the soft clear sky
The wreathing smoke, which spake domestic love,
In household duties cheerfully performed;
And, wading in the neighbouring rivulet,
With eager fingers, from the wild-flower banks
Sweet-scented, childhood gathered nameless blooms.
And now, as if communion were cut off
Utterly with mankind and their concerns,
Amid the bleak and barren solitude
Of that precipitous and sea-girt rock
We found ourselves; the waves their orison
Howled to the winds, which from the breezy North
Over the German Ocean came, as 'twere
To moan in anger through the rifted caves,
Whose echoes gave a desolate response!
Far in the twilight of primeval time,
This must have been a place (ponderingly
Methought) where aboriginal men poured forth
Their erring worship to the elements,
Long ere the Druid, in the sullen night
Of old oak forests, tinged his altar-stone
With blood of brotherhood. It must be so ;
So awfully doth the spirit of their powers-
The desolating winds, the trampling waves,
With their white manes, the storm-shower, and the sun-
Here, in this solitude, impress the mind.
Yet human hearts have beat in this abode,"
All sullen and repulsive though it be -
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