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ODE ON HEARING OF THE DEATH OF MR PITT.

O, Pitt, I may wail thee, and wail without blame,
For here cannot party deride!

'Twas in the lone wild I first heard of thy name,
With Nature alone for my guide,

299

Who taught me to love thee-my boast and my pride
From thence thou hast been and shalt be;

I read and I wonder'd, but still I read on,
My bosom heaved high with an ardour unknown,
But I found it congenial in all with thine own,
And I set up my nest under thee.

I wonder'd when senators sternly express'd
Disgust at each measure of thine;

For I was as simple as babe at the breast,
And their motives I could not divine.

I knew not, and still small the knowledge is mine,

Of the passions that mankind dissever,

That minds there are framed like the turbulent ocean, That foams on its barriers with ceaseless commotion, On the rock that stands highest commanding devotion, There dash its rude billows for ever.

300 ODE ON HEARING OF THE DEATH OF MR PITT.

They said thou wert proud;-I have ponder'd it long, I have tried thee by plummet and line,

Have weigh'd in the balance the right and the wrong,
And am forced in the charge to combine:

They call'd thee ambitious;-a censure condign-
I know it-I own it was true;

But it was of thy country alone thou wert proud,
Thy ambition was all for her glory and good,

For there thy wrung heart a wild torrent withstood,
Which broke what it could not subdue.

Be hallow'd thy memory, illustrious shade!

A shepherd can ill understand,

But he weens that as clear and unbiass'd a head,

As clean and less sordid a hand,

Or a heart more untainted did never command

The wealth of a nation on earth;

And he knows that long hence, when his head's low as

thine,

That the good and the great, and the brave and benign,

And the lovers of country and king, will combine

To hallow the hour of thy birth.

BUSACO.

BEYOND Busaco's mountains dun,

When far had roll'd the sultry sun,

And night her pall of gloom had thrown O'er nature's still convexity,

High on the heath our tents were spread,
The green turf was our cheerless bed,

And o'er the hero's dew-chill'd head
The banners flapp'd incessantly.

The loud war-trumpet woke the morn,
The quivering drum, the pealing horn,
From rank to rank the cry is borne,

"Arouse for death or victory!"

The orb of day in crimson dye

Began to mount the morning sky,

Then what a scene for warrior's eye
Hung on the bold declivity!

The serried bay'nets glittering stood,
Like icicles on hills of blood,

An aerial stream, a silver wood,

Reel'd in the flickering canopy. Like waves of ocean rolling fast, Or thunder-cloud before the blast, Massena's legions, stern and vast, Rush'd to the dreadful revelry.

The pause is o'er, the fateful shock,
A thousand thousand thunders woke,
The air grows sick, the mountains rock,
Red ruin rides triumphantly!

Light boil'd the war-cloud to the sky,
In phantom towers and columns high;
But dark and dense their bases lie,

Prone on the battle's boundary.

The thistle waved her bonnet blue,

The harp her wildest war-notes threw,

The red rose gain'd a fresher hue,

Busaco, in thy heraldry!

Hail, gallant brothers! woe befall
The foe that braves thy triple wall!
For even the slumbering Portugal

Arouses at thy chivalry!

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