One instant's glance around he threw,
From saddle-bow his pistol drew.
Grimly determined was his look!
His charger with his spurs he struck;
All scattered backward as he came,
For all knew Bertram Risingham!
Three bounds that noble courser gave;
The first has reached the central nave,
The second cleared the chancel wide,
The third he was at Wycliffe's side!
Full leveled at the Baron's head,
Rang the report; the bullet sped;
And to his long account, and last,
Without a groan, dark Oswald past.
All was so quick, that it might seem
A flash of lightning, or a dream.
While yet the smoke the deed conceals,
Bertram his ready charger wheels;
But floundered on the pavement floor
The steed; and down the rider bore;
And bursting in the headlong sway,
The faithless saddle-girths gave way.
'Twas while he toiled him to be freed,
And with the rein to raise the steed,
That from amazement's iron trance
All Wycliffe's soldiers waked at once.
Sword, halberd, musket-butt, their blows
Hailed upon Bertram as he rose;
A score of pikes, with each a wound,
Bore down and pinned him to the ground;
But still his struggling force he rears,
'Gainst hacking brands and stabbing spears;
Thrice from assailants shook him free,
Once gained his feet, and twice his knee,
By tenfold odds oppressed, at length,
Despite his struggles and his strength,
He took a hundred mortal wounds,
As mute as fox 'mong mangling hounds;
And when he died, his parting groan
Had more of laughter than of moan!
They gazed, as when a lion dies,
And hunters scarcely trust their eyes,
But bend their weapons on the slain,
Lest the grim king should rouse again!
Then blow and insult some renewed,
And from the trunk the head had hewed,
But Basil's voice the deed forbade;
A mantle o'er the corse he laid;
"Fell as he was in act and mind,
He left no bolder heart behind:
Then give him, for a soldier meet,
A soldier's cloak for winding-sheet."
FROM SCOTT.
IN the following extract from one of Byron's poems, Mazeppa, a Cossack prince and an officer in the army of Charles XII, of Sweden, describes the manner in which, in his youth, falling into the hands of an enemy, he was turned loose on a wild horse to perish. The horse died under him, but he was discovered by some cottagers, and his life preserved.
"BRING forth the horse!" the horse was brought;
In truth, he was a noble steed,
A Tartar of the Ukraine breed,
Who looked as though the speed of thought
Were in his limbs; but he was wild,
Wild as the wild deer, and untaught,
With spur and bridle undefiled;
'T was but a day he had been caught;
And snorting with erected mane,
And struggling fiercely, but in vain,
In the full foam of wrath and dread,
To me the desert-born was led.
They bound me on, that menial throng,
Upon his back with many a thong;
They loosed him with a sudden lash:
Away! away! and on we dash!
Torrents less rapid and less rash.
Away, away, my steed and I,
Upon the pinions of the wind,
All human dwellings left behind;
We sped like meteors through the sky,
When with its crackling sound, the night
Is checkered with the northern light.
Town, village, none were on our track,
But a wild plain of far extent,
And bounded by a forest black.
The sky was dull, and dim, and gray,
And a low breeze crept moaning by.
I could have answered with a sigh;
But fast we fled, away, away,
And I could neither sigh nor pray;
And my cold sweat-drops fell, like rain,
Upon the courser's bristling mane.
We neared the wild-wood; 'twas so wide,
I saw no bounds on either side;
The boughs gave way, and did not tear
My limbs, and I found strength to bear
My wounds, already scarred with cold;
My bonds forbade to loose my hold.
We rustled through the leaves like wind,
Left shrubs, and trees, and wolves behind.
By night I heard them on my track;
Their troop came hard upon our back,
With their long gallop, which can tire
The hound's deep hate, and hunter's fire:
Where'er we flew they followed on,
Nor left us with the morning sun.
Oh! how I wished for spear or sword,
At least to die amid the horde,
And perish, if it must be so,
At bay, destroying many a foe.
My heart turned sick, my brain grew sore,
And throbbed awhile, then beat no more,
The skies spun like a mighty wheel:
I saw the trees like drunkards reel,
And a light flash sprung o'er my eyes,
Which saw no further. He who dies,
Can die no more than then I died,
O'ertortured by that ghastly ride.
At length, while reeling on our way,
Methought I heard a courser neigh,
From out yon tuft of blackening firs.
Is it the wind those branches stirs ?
No! no! from out the forest prance
A trampling troop! I see them come!
In one vast squadron they advance!
The sight renerved my courser's feet,
A moment staggering, feebly fleet,
A moment with a faint low neigh,
He answered, and then fell;
With gasps and glazing eyes he lay,
And reeking limbs immovable.
His first and last career is done!
On came the troop; they saw him stoop;
They saw me strangely bound along
His back with many a bloody thong;
They snort, they foam, neigh, swerve aside,
And backward to the forest fly,
By instinct, from a human eye.
They left me there to my despair,
Linked to the dead and stiffening wretch,
Whose lifeless limbs beneath me stretch,
Relieved from that unwonted weight,
From which I could not extricate
Nor him nor me; and there we lay,
The dying on the dead.
BURST AT THE COVER; the starting of the game from the underbrush which covered it.
Sleep no more! 'Tis a noble morn:
The dews hang thick on the frin-ged thorn,
And the frost shrinks back, like a beaten hound,
Under the steaming, steaming ground.
Behold, where the billowy clouds flow by,
And leave us alone in the clear, gray sky!
Our horses are ready and steady. So, ho!
We are gone, like a dart from the Tartar's bow.
Hark! hark! Who calleth the maiden morn
From her sleep in the woods and the stubble corn?
The horn! The horn!
The merry, sweet ring of the hunter's horn.
Now, through the copse, where the fox is found,
And over the stream at a mighty bound,
And over the highlands, and over the low,
O'er furrows, o'er meadows, the hunters go!
Away! as a hawk flies full at its prey,
So flieth the hunter! away! away!
From the burst at the cover till set of sun,
When the red fox dies, and
Hark! hark! What sound on the wind is borne ?
'Tis the conquering voice of the hunter's horn.
The horn! The horn!
The merry, bold voice of the hunter's horn.
Sound, sound the horn! To the hunter good,
What's the gully deep, or the roaring flood?
Right over he bounds, as the wild stag bounds,
At the heels of his swift, sure, silent hounds.
O, what delight can a mortal lack,
When he once is firm on his horse's back,
With his stirrups short, and his snaffle strong,
And the blast of the horn for his morning song?
Hark! hark! Now, home! and dream, till morn,
Of the bold, sweet sound of the hunter's horn!
The horn! The horn!
O, the sound of all sounds is the hunter's horn!
FROM PROCTOR.
KNOUT; an instrument of punishment, used in Russia.
OUR fatherland is in danger. Citizens of the fatherland! To arms! To arms! If we believed the country could be saved by ordinary means, we would not cry that it is in danger. If we stood at the head of a cowardly, childish nation, which, in the hour of peril, prefers defeat to defense, we would not sound the alarm-bell. But because
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