Ye have reaped, as the Destinies reap, The deeds that we vainly plan. Now reap as the generous life Of the pregnant Earth commands, Each seed with a future rife, And the work of a thousand hands. Lord Houghton. HOME Alnwick. ALNWICK CASTLE. ME of the Percy's high-born race, Home of their beautiful and brave, Alike their birth and burial place, Their cradle and their grave! Still sternly o'er the castle gate Their house's Lion stands in state As in his proud departed hours; And warriors frown in stone on high, And feudal banners "flout the sky" Above his princely towers. A gentle hill its side inclines Lovely in England's fadeless green, To meet the quiet stream which winds Through this romantic scene As silently and sweetly still As when, at evening, on that hill, While summer's wind blew soft and low, Seated by gallant Hotspur's side, His Katherine was a happy bride A thousand years ago. Gaze on the Abbey's ruined pile: Still tells, in melancholy glory, The Percy's proudest border story. That day its roof was triumph's arch; Then rang, from aisle 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 mailéd 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, Those giant oaks could tell, Of beings born and buried here; Since on their boughs the startled bird I wandered through the lofty halls From him who once his standard set Glitter the Sultan's crescent moons, That last half-stanza, it has dashed Above this bank-note world is gone; And beasts and borderers throng the way; These are not the romantic times So dazzling to the dreaming boy; The age of bargaining, said Burke, Sleep on, nor from your cerements start!) For Greece and fame, for faith and heaven, You'll ask if yet the Percy lives In the armed pomp of feudal state? Of Hotspur and his "gentle Kate" 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, For ten-and-sixpence sterling. Fitz-Greene Halleck. |