UPON his royal throne he sat,
In a monarch's thoughtful mood;
Attendants on his regal state
His servile courtiers stood,
With foolish flatteries, false and vain,
To win his smile, his favour gain.
They told him e'en the mighty deep
His kingly sway confessed;
That he could bid its billows leap
Or still its stormy breast!
He smiled contemptuously, and cried,
"Be then my boasted empire tried!"
Down to the ocean's sounding shore
The proud procession came,
To see its billows' wild uproar
King Canute's power proclaim;
Or, at his high and dread command,
In gentle murmurs kiss the strand.
Not so, thought he, their noble king,
As his course he seaward sped ;-
And each base slave, like a guilty thing,
Hung down his conscious head ;—
He knew the ocean's Lord on high!
They, that he scorned their senseless lie.
His throne was placed by ocean's side,
He lifted his sceptre there ;
Bidding, with tones of kingly pride,
The waves their strife forbear:-
And, while he spoke his royal will,
All but the winds and waves were still.
Louder the stormy blast swept by,
In scorn of his idle word ;
The briny deep its waves tossed high,
By his mandate undeterred,
As threatening, in their angry play,
To sweep both king and court away.
The monarch, with upbraiding look,
Turned to the courtly ring;
But none the kindling eye could brook,
Even of his earthly king;
For in that wrathful glance they see
A mightier monarch wronged than he!
Canute! thy regal race is run ;
Thy name had passed away,
But for the meed this tale hath won
Which never shall decay :
Its meek, unperishing renown,
Outlasts thy sceptre and thy crown.
The Persian, in his mighty pride,
Forged fetters for the main;
And when its floods his power defied,
Inflicted stripes as vain ;—
But it was worthier far of thee
To know thyself, than rule the sea!
BY JAMES MONTGOMERY.
THERE is a land, of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside ;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons emparadise the night;
A land of beauty, virtue, valour, truth,
Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth;
The wandering mariner, whose eye explores
The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores,
Views not a realm so bountiful and fair,
Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air.
In every clime the magnet of his soul,
Touched by remembrance, trembles to that pole;
For in this land of Heaven's peculiar grace,
The heritage of nature's noblest race,
There is a spot of earth, supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.
Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside
His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride,
While in his softened looks benignly blend
The sire, the son, the husband, brother, friend:
Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife,
Strews with fresh flowers the narrow path of life ;
In the clear heaven of her delightful eye,
An angel-guard of loves and graces lie;
Around her knees domestic duties meet,
And fire-side pleasures gambol at her feet.
Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?
Art thou a man?—A patriot ?-look around;
O, thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy home.
On Greenland's rocks, o'er rude Kamschatka's plains, In pale Siberia's desolate domains;
Where the wild hunter takes his lonely way,
Tracks through tempestuous snows his savage prey,
The reindeer's spoil, the ermine's treasures shares,
And feasts his famine on the fat of bears:
Or, wrestling with the might of raging seas,
Where round the pole the eternal billows freeze,
Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain
Plunging down headlong through the whirling main;
-His wastes of ice are lovelier in his eye
Than all the flowery vales beneath the sky;
And dearer far than Cæsar's palace-dome,
His cavern shelter, and his cottage-home.
O'er China's garden-fields, and peopled floods;
In California's pathless world of woods;
Round Andes' heights, where winter, from his throne,
Looks down in scorn upon the summer gone;
By the gay borders of Bermuda's isles,
Where spring with everlasting verdure smiles;
On
pure Madeira's vine-robed hills of health;
In Java's swamp of pestilence and wealth;
Where Babel stood, where wolves and jackals drink;
'Midst weeping willows, on Euphrates' brink;
On Carmel's crest; by Jordan's reverend stream,
Where Canaan's glories vanished like a dream;
Where Greece, a spectre, haunts her heroes' graves,
And Rome's vast ruins darken Tiber's waves;
Where broken-hearted Switzerland bewails
Her subject mountains, and dishonoured vales ;
Where Albion's rocks exult amidst the sea,
Around the beauteous isle of liberty ;
-Man, through all ages of revolving time,
Unchanging man, in every varying clime,
Deems his own land of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside ;
His home the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.
THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.
Nor a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the ramparts we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our Hero we buried.
We buried him darkly,—at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.
No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay-like a warrior taking his restWith his martial cloak around him!
Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
How the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!
Lightly, they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him;
But nothing he 'll reck if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
But half of our heavy task was done,
When the clock tolled the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, we raised not a stone, But we left him-alone with his glory!
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