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The Sicilian Vespers.

For a boding clash, and a clanging tramp,
And a summoning voice were heard,
And fretted wall, and tombstone damp,
To the fearful echo stirr'd.

The peasant heard the sound,

As he sat beside his hearth;

And the song and the dance were hush'd around,
With the fireside tale of mirth.

The chieftain shook in his banner'd hall,
As the sound of war drew nigh;

And the warder shrank from the castle wall,
As the gleam of spears went by.

Woe, woe, to the stranger, then ;
At the feast and flow of wine,
In the red array of mailed men,
Or bow'd at the holy shrine;

For the waken'd pride of an injured land
Had burst its iron thrall:

From the plumed chief to the pilgrim band;
Woe, woe, to the sons of Gaul!

Proud beings tell that hour,

With the young and passing fair,

And the flame went up from dome and tower,
The avenger's arm was there!

The stranger priest at the altar stood,

And clasp'd his beads in prayer,

But the holy shrine grew dim with blood;

The avenger found him there!

Woe, woe, to the sons of Gaul;
To the serf and mailed lord;
They were gathered darkly, one and all,
To the harvest of the sword;
And the morning sun, with a quiet smile,
Shone out o'er hill and glen,

On ruin'd temple and mouldering pile,
And the ghastly forms of men.

Ay, the sunshine sweetly smiled,
As its early glance came forth;
It had no sympathy with the wild
And terrible things of earth;

And the man of blood that day might read,
In a language freely given,

How ill his dark and midnight deed

Became the light of heaven.

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35. THE BATTLE OF MORGARTEN.

MRS. HEMANS.

[Felicia Dorothea Hemans was born at Liverpool, Sept. 25, 1793, but was removed with her family before she had attained the age of seven to Gwrych, in Derbyshire. In this romantic region she wrote some very creditable verse while yet in her twelfth year. In 1809 the family removed to St. Asaph, in Flintshire, and in 1812 her "Domestic Affections and other Poems" were published. In the summer of this year she was married to Captain Hemans, who, in 1818, left her with five children, "to try the effect of a southern climate," but his wife never saw him again, there can be little doubt that it was this painful separation which tinged much of her subsequent compositions with that melancholy feeling that rendered it so touching, and occasionally, so monotonously pathetic. She may claim to be the first English writer who made the poetry of the home affections adapted to the purposes of song; she beautified and purified musical ballad literature, and had hundreds of imitators -the best proof of the originality of her genius. She died at Dublin, May 16, 1835.]

THE wine-month shone in its golden prime,
And the red grapes clustering hung,

But a deeper sound, through the Switzer's clime,
Than the vintage-music, rung.

A sound, through vaulted cave,
A sound, through echoing glen,

Like the hollow swell of a rushing wave;
-'Twas the tread of steel-girt men.

And a trumpet, pealing wild and far,
'Midst the ancient rocks was blown,

Till the Alps replied to that voice of war
With a thousand of their own.

And through the forest-glooms
Flash'd helmets to the day,

And the winds were tossing knightly plumes,
Like the larch-boughs in their play.

In Hasli's wilds there was gleaming steel,
As the host of the Austrian pass'd;

And the Schreckhorn's rocks, with a savage peal,
Made mirth of his clarion's blast.

Up 'midst the Righi snows
The stormy march was heard,

With the charger's tramp, whence fire-sparks rose,
And the leader's gathering word.

But a band, the noblest band of all,
Through the rude Morgarten strait,
With blazon'd streamers, and lances tall,
Moved onwards in princely state.

The Battle of Morgarten.

They came with heavy chains, For the race despised so longBut amidst his Alp-domains,

The herdsman's arm is strong!

The sun was reddening the clouds of morn
When they entered the rock defile,
And shrill as a joyous hunter's horn
Their bugles rung the while.
But on the misty height,

Where the mountain people stood,

There was stillness, as of night,

When storms at distance brood.

There was stillness, as of deep dead night,
And a pause-but not of fear,

While the Switzers gazed on the gathering might
Of the hostile shield and spear.

On wound those columns bright

Between the lake and wood,

But they look'd not to the misty height
Where the mountain-people stood.

The

pass was fill'd with their serried power, All helm'd and mail-array'd,

And their steps had sounds like a thunder-shower

In the rustling forest-shade.

There were prince and crested knight,
Hemm'd in by cliff and flood,

When a shout arose from the misty height
Where the mountain-people stood.

And the mighty rocks came bounding down,
Their startled foes among,

With a joyous whirl from the summit thrown—
-Oh! the herdsman's arm is strong!

They came like lauwine hurl'd

From Alp to Alp in play,

When the echoes shout through the snowy world
And the pines are borne away.

The fir-woods crash'd on the mountain-side,
And the Switzers rush'd from high,

With a sudden charge, on the flower and pride
Of the Austrian chivalry:

Like hunters of the deer,

They storm'd the narrow dell,

And first in the shock, with Uri's spear,

Was the arm of William Tell.

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There was tumult in the crowded strait,
And a cry of wild dismay,
And many a warrior met his fate
From a peasant's hand that day!
And the empire's banner then
From its place of waving free,
Went down before the shepherd-men,
The men of the Forest-sea.

With their pikes and massy clubs they brake
The cuirass and the shield,

And the war-horse dash'd to the reddening lake
From the reapers of the field!

The field- but not of sheaves-
Proud crests and pennons lay,

Strewn o'er it thick as the birch-wood leaves,
In the autumn tempest's way.

Oh! the sun in heaven fierce havoc view'd,
When the Austrian turn'd to fly,
And the brave, in the trampling multitude,
Had a fearful death to die!

And the leader of the war
At eve unhelm'd was seen,

With a hurrying step on the wilds afar,
And a pale and troubled mien.

But the sons of the land which the freeman tills,
Went back from the battle-toil,

To their cabin homes 'midst the deep green hills, All burden'd with royal spoil.

There were songs and festal fires

On the soaring Alps that night,

When children sprung to greet their sires
From the wild Morgarten fight.

36. THE ROPEWALK.

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

IN that building long and low
With its windows all a-row,

Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their thread so thin
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.

At the end, an open door;
Squares of sunshine on the floor
Light the long and dusky lane;

The Ropewalk.

And the whirring of a wheel,
Dull and drowsy makes me feel,
All its spokes are in my brain.

As the spinners to the end
Downward go and re-ascend,

Gleam the long threads in the sun;
While within this brain of mine
Cobwebs brighter and more fine
By the busy wheel are spun.

Two fair maidens in a swing,
Like white doves upon the wing,
First before my vision pass;
Laughing, as their gentle hands
Closely clasp the twisted strands,
At their shadow on the grass.

Then a booth of mountebanks,
With its smell of tan and planks,
And a girl poised high in air
On a cord, in spangled dress,
With a faded loveliness,

And a weary look of care.

Then a homestead among farms,
And a woman with bare arms
Drawing water from a well;
As the bucket mounts apace,
With it mounts her own fair face,
As at some magician's spell.

Then an old man in a tower,
Ringing loud the noontide hour,

While the rope coils round and round

Like a serpent at his feet,

And again, in swift retreat,

Nearly lifts him from the ground.

Then within a prison-yard,

Faces fixed, and stern, and hard,

Laughter and indecent mirth;

Ah! it is the gallows-tree!

Breath of Christian charity,

Blow, and sweep it from the earth!

Then a schoolboy, with his kite
Gleaming in a sky of light,

And an eager upward look;

Steeds pursued through lane and field;
Fowlers with their snares concealed;
And an angler by a brook.

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