AUTUMN wins you best by this its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay:
Look up, sweet Michal, nor esteem the less
Your stained and drooping vines their grapes bow down,
Nor blame those creaking trees bent with their fruit,
That apple-tree with a rare after-birth
Of peeping blooms sprinkled its wealth among! Then for the winds-what wind that ever raved Shall vex that ash which overlooks you bothSo proud it bears its berries? Ah, at length, The old smile meet for her, the lady of this Sequester'd nest !-this kingdom, limited
Alone by one old populous green wall
Tenanted by the ever-busy flies,
Grey crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders,. Each family of the silver-threaded moss
Which, look through near, this way, and it appears
A stubble-field or a cane-brake, a marsh
Of bulrush whitening in the sun: laugh now!
Fancy the crickets, each one in his house,
Looking out, wondering at the world-or best,
Yon painted snail with his gay shell of dew,
Travelling to see the glossy balls high up
Hung by the caterpillar like gold lamps.
WHAT I love best in all the world,
Is, a castle, precipice encurled,
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
(If I get my head from out the mouth
O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
And come again to the land of lands)—
In a seaside house to the farther South,
Where the baked Cicalas die of drouth,
And one sharp tree-'tis a cypress-stands,
By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Rough iron spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,
My sentinel to guard the sands
To the water's edge. For what expands
Before the house but the great opaque
Blue breadth of sea without a break?
While, in the house, for ever crumbles
Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
Down on the pavement green-flesh melons,
And says there's news to-day—the king
Was shot at, touched in the liver wing,
Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:
-She hopes they have not caught the felons.
(THE BEACON-FIRE.)
Is yon the star o'er Penchryst-Pen,
That rises slowly to her ken,
And, spreading broad its wavering light,
Shakes its loose tresses on the night?
Is yon red glare the Western star?
O, 'tis the beacon-blaze of war!
The Warder viewed it blazing strong,
And blew his war-note loud and long,
Till, at the high and haughty sound,
Rock, wood, and river rung around.
The blast alarmed the festal hall,
And startled forth the warriors all;
Far downward, in the castle-yard,
Full many a torch and cresset glared;
And helms and plumes, confusedly tossed,
THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.
Were in the blaze half seen, half lost;
And spears in wild disorder shook,
Like reeds beside a frozen brook.
The Seneschal, whose silver hair
Was reddened by the torches' glare,
Stood in the midst, with gesture proud,
And issued forth his mandates loud :-
"On Penchryst glows a bale of fire
And three are kindling on Priesthaughswire.
Ride out, ride out,
Mount, mount for Branksome, every man!
Thou, Todrig, warn the Johnstone clan,
That ever are true and stout-
Ye need not send to Liddesdale ;
For when they see the blazing bale,
Elliots and Armstrongs never fail.—
Ride, Alton, ride, for death or life!
And warn the Warder of the strife.
Young Gilbert, let our beacon blaze,
Our kin, and clan, and friends to raise.
The ready page, with hurried hand,
Awaked the need-fire's slumbering brand,
And ruddy blushed the heaven:
For a sheet of flame, from the turret high,
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