The legend of the Cheviot day,
The Percys' proudest border story.
That day its roof was triumph's arch;
Then rang, from isle to pictured dome,
The light step of the soldier's march,

The music of the trump and drum;
And babe, and sire, the old, the young,
And the monk's hymn, and minstrel's song,
And woman's pure kiss, sweet and long,
Welcomed her warrior home.

Wild roses by the Abbey towers

Are gay in their young bud and bloom: They were born of a race of funeral flowers That garlanded, in long-gone hours,

A templar's knightly tomb.

He died, the sword in his mailed hand,

On the holiest spot of the Blessed land,

Where the Cross was damped with his dying breath, When blood ran free as festal wine,

And the sainted air of Palestine

Was thick with the darts of death.

Wise with the lore of centuries,

What tales, if there be "tongues in trees,"
Those giant oaks could tell,

Of beings born and buried here;
Tales of the peasant and the peer,
Tales of the bridal and the bier,

The welcome and farewell,

Since on their boughs the startled bird First, in her twilight slumbers, heard The Norman's curfew-bell!

I wandered through the lofty halls
Trod by the Percys of old fame,
And traced upon the chapel walls
Each high heroic name,

From him who once his standard set
Where now, o'er mosque and minaret,

Glitter the Sultan's crescent moons; To him who, when a younger son, Fought for King George at Lexington, A major of dragoons.

That last half stanza-it has dashed

From my warm lips the sparkling cup; The light that o'er my eyebeam flashed, The power that bore my spirit up Above this bank-note world—is gone; And Alnwick's but a market town,

And this, alas! its market day,

And beasts and borderers throng the way; Oxen and bleating lambs in lots, Northumbrian boors and plaided Scots,

Men in the coal and cattle line; From Teviot's bard and hero land, From royal Berwick's beach of sand, From Wooller, Morpeth, Hexham, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

These are not the romantic times
So beautiful in Spenser's rhymes,
So dazzling to the dreaming boy:
Ours are the days of fact, not fable,
Of knights, but not of the round table,
Of Bailie Jarvie, not Rob Roy:
"T is what "our President" Monroe
Has called "the era of good feeling":
The Highlander, the bitterest foe
To modern laws, has felt their blow,
Consented to be taxed, and vote,
And put on pantaloons and coat,
And leave off cattle-stealing:
Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglas in red herrings;
And noble name and cultured land,
Palace, and park, and vassal band,
Are powerless to the notes of hand
Of Rothschild or the Barings.

The age of bargaining, said Burke,
Has come: to-day the turbaned Turk
(Sleep, Richard of the lion heart!
Sleep on, nor from your cerements start),
Is England's friend and fast ally;
The Moslem tramples on the Greek,
And on the Cross and altar-stone,
And Christendom looks tamely on,

And hears the Christian maiden shriek,
And sees the Christian father die;
And not a sabre-blow is given

For Greece and fame, for faith and heaven,
By Europe's craven chivalry.

You'll ask if yet the Percy lives
In the armed pomp of feudal state?
The present representatives

Of Hotspur and his "gentle Kate,"
Are some half-dozen serving-men
In the drab coat of William Penn;

A chambermaid, whose lip and eye,

And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling,
Spoke nature's aristocracy;

And one, half groom, half seneschal,

Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall,
From donjon-keep to turret wall,

For ten-and-sixpence sterling.

Burns

To a Rose, brought from near Alloway Kirk, in Ayrshire, in the Autumn of 1822

Wild rose of Alloway! my thanks;
Thou 'mindst me of that autumn noon
When first we met upon "the banks

And braes o' bonny Doon."

Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's bough, My sunny hour was glad and brief, We've crossed the winter sea, and thou Art withered-flower and leaf.

And will not thy death-doom be mine-
The doom of all things wrought of clay-
And withered my life's leaf like thine,
Wild rose of Alloway?

Not so his memory, for whose sake
My bosom bore thee far and long,
His-who a humbler flower could make
Immortal as his song.

The memory of Burns-a name

That calls, when brimmed her festal cup,

A nation's glory and her shame,

In silent sadness up.

A nation's glory-be the rest

Forgot-she's canonized his mind;

And it is joy to speak the best

We may of human kind.

I've stood beside the cottage-bed

Where the Bard-peasant first drew breath;

A straw-thatched roof above his head,
A straw-wrought couch beneath.