What though the enemy taunt and deride us!
Have we forgotten the triumphs of yore?
What if the oceans may seem to divide us!
Brothers, remember the friendship we bore.
Lo! it is finished-the day of probations.

Up! and we stand for the England to be. Then, as the Head and the Front of the Nations, Brothers, your health!-from the snotties at sea! 'Stand well,' say the snotties (Good luck,' say the snotties),

'And wisely and firmly and great shall we be ; For monarchies tremble,

And empires dissemble,

But Britain shall stand'-say the snotties at

sea!

George Frederic Stewart Bowles.

II

WALES

CXIX

THE BARD

'RUIN seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Though fanned by Conquest's crimson wing
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail

To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears.'
Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side

He wound with toilsome march his long array : Stout Glo'ster stood aghast in speechless trance; 'To arms!' cried Mortimer, and couched his quivering lance.

On a rock, whose haughty brow Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,

Robed in the sable garb of woe,

With haggard eyes the poet stood
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air),
And with a master's hand and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre:

'Hark, how each giant oak, and desert cave
Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!
O'er thee, O King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day,

To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay.

L

'Cold is Cadwallo's tongue

That hushed the stormy main :

Brave Urien sleeps upon

his craggy

Mountains, ye mourn in vain
Modred, whose magic song

bed:

Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head.
On dreary Arvon's shore they lie,
Smeared with gore and ghastly pale :
Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail;

The famished eagle screams and passes by.
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your dying country's cries!-
No more I weep. They do not sleep.

On yonder cliffs, a grisly band,

I see them sit; they linger yet,
Avengers of their native land:

With me in dreadful harmony they join,

And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.

'Weave the warp and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of Edward's race:
Give ample room and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.
Mark the year and mark the night

When Severn shall re-echo with affright

The shrieks of death through Berkeley's roof that ring,

Shrieks of an agonizing king!

She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,

That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs
The scourge of Heaven. What terrors round him
wait!

Amazement in his van, with Flight combined,
And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind.

Mighty victor, mighty lord,

Low on his funeral couch he lies!

No pitying heart, no eye, afford

A tear to grace his obsequies.