RICHARD PLANTAGENET.

A Legendary Tale.

BY THOMAS HULL.

"THE poem is written in a descriptive strain of elegiac verse, and exhibits a venerable example of passive fortitude and resignation to the will of Heaven."-Critical Review, April, 1774.

"THE work is done! the structure is complete.-
Long may this produce of my humble toil

Uninjured stand and echo long repeat,

Round the dear walls, Benevolence and MOYLE!

So Richard spake, as he surveyed

The dwelling he had raised;
And, in the fulness of his heart,

His generous patron praised.

* Sir Thomas Moyle, possessor of Eastwell-Place, in Kent, in the year 1546, gave Richard Plantagenet (who for many years had been his chief bricklayer) a piece of ground, and permission to build himself a house thereon. The poem opens, just when Richard is supposed to have finished this task. Eastwell-Place has since been in the possession of the Earls of Winchilsea.

Him Moyle o'erheard, whose wandering step
Chance guided had that way;
The workman's mien he ey'd intent,

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Then earnest thus did say:

My mind, I see, misgave me not; My doubtings now are clear; Thou oughtest not, in poor attire, Have dwelt a menial here.

"To drudgery, and servile toil,
Thou couldst not be decreed

By birth and blood; but thereto wrought
By hard o'er-ruling need.

"Is it not so? That crimson glow,

That flushes o'er thy cheek,

And down-cast eye, true answer give,
And thy tongue need not speak.

"Oft have I marked thee, when unseen
Thou thought'st thyself by all,
What time the workman from his task
The evening bell did call,

"Hast thou not shunned thy untaught mates,

And to some secret nook,

With drooping gait and musing eye,

Thy lonely step betook?

"There has not thy attention dwelt

Upon the lettered page;

Lost, as it seemed, to all beside,

Like some sequestered sage?

"And wouldst thou not, with eager haste,

The precious volume hide,

If sudden some intruder's eye

Thy musings had descried?

"Oft have I deemed thou couldst explore The Greek and Roman page;

And oft have yearned to view the theme, That did thy hours engage.

"But sorrow, greedy, grudging, coy,
Esteems of mighty price

Its treasured cares, and to the world
The scantiest share denies;

"All as the miser's heaped hoards,
To him alone confined,

They serve, at once, to sooth and pain
The wretched owner's mind.

"Me had capricious fortune doomed
Thine equal in degree,

Long, long ere now, I had desired
To know thine history;

"But who their worldly honours wear

With meekness chaste and due,

Decline to ask, lest the request

Should bear commandment's hue.

"Yet now thy tongue hath spoke aloud

Thy grateful piety,

No longer be thy story kept

In painful secresy.

"Give me to know thy dawn of life;

Unfold, with simple truth,

Not to thy master, but thy friend,

The promise of thy youth.

"Now, late in life, 'tis time, I ween,

To give thy labours o'er;
Thy well-worn implements lay by,

And drudge and toil no more.

"Here shalt thou find a quiet rest
For all thy days to come ;
And every comfort, that may serve
To endear thy humble home.

"Hast thou a wish, a hope to frame,
Beyond this neat abode ?—
Is there a good, a higher bliss,
By me may be bestowed?—

"Is there within thy aged breast
The smallest aching void?
Give me to know thy longings all,
And see them all supplied!

"All I entreat, in lieu, is this,
Unfold, with simple truth,
Not to thy master, but thy friend,
The promise of thy youth."

So generous Moyle intent bespake
The long-enduring man ;

Who raised, at length, his drooping head,
And sighing,—thus began :

RICHARD PLANTAGENET RECITES HIS TALE.

HARD task to any, but thyself, to tell

The story of my birth and treacherous fate,
Or paint the tumults in my breast that swell,
At recollection of my infant state!

Oft have I laboured to forget my birth,

And checked remembrance, when, in cruel wise,
From time's abyss she would the tale draw forth,
And place my former self before my eyes.

Yet I complain not, though I feel anew

All as I speak, fell fortune's bitter spite,
Who once set affluence, grandeur in my view,

Then churlish snatched them from my cheated sight.

And yet it may be-is-nay, must be, best,

Whate'er heaven's righteous laws for man ordain ;—
Weak man! who lets one sigh invade his breast,
For earthly grandeur, fugitive as vain !—

Perchance contentment had not been my mate,
If in exalted life my feet had trod;
Or my hands borne, in transitory state,

The victor's truncheon, or the ruler's rod.

* Such a person, who was a natural son of Richard Duke of Gloucester, the Usurper, actually lived and died in the parish of Eastwell in Kent. His death is recorded in the Parish Register, at the year 1550, and in the eighty-first year of his age. Without any derogation from the excellence and exemplary patience of the innocent son, the Editor cannot help observing, that the character of the truly unprincipled and sanguinary Richard III. has been in vain attempted to be glossed over in the poem.