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, Gaze on the Abbey's ruined pile : Does not the succouring Ivy, keeping Her watch around it, seem to smile, As o'er a loved one sleeping? One solitary turret gray Still tells, in melancholy glory, The legend of the Cheviot day, The Percys' 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, 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 mailed 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, What tales, if there be "tongues in trees," Of beings born and buried here; The welcome and farewell, Since on their boughs the startled bird First, in her twilight slumbers, heard I wandered through the lofty halls Each high, heroic name, From him who once his standard set Where now, o'er mosque and minaret, Glitter the Sultan's crescent moons; To him who, when a younger son, 3 Fought for King George at Lexington, A Major of Dragoons. That last half stanza-it has dashed From my warm lip the sparkling cup; The light that o'er my eye-beam flashed, The power that bore my spirit up Above this bank-note world-is gone; And Alnwick's but a market town, And this, alas! its market day, And beasts and borderers throng the way; Oxen, and bleating lambs in lots, Northumbrian boors, and plaided Scots; Men in the coal and cattle line, From Teviot's bard and hero land, From royal Berwick's beach of sand, These are not the romantic times So dazzling to the dreaming boy: "Tis what "our President," Munro, Has called "the era of good feeling :" The Highlander, the bitterest foe To modern laws, has felt their blow, Consented to be taxed, and vote, And put on pantaloons and coat, And leave off cattle-stealing: Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt, The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt, The Douglas in red herrings; And noble name, and cultured land, The age of bargaining, said Burke, Sleep on, nor from your cearments start,) And hears the Christian maiden shriek, And not a sabre blow is given For Greece and fame, for faith and heaven, By Europe's craven chivalry. |