SONG ON OUR QUEEN.

SET TO MUSIC BY CHARLES NEATE, ESQ.

VICTORIA'S Sceptre o'er the deep

Has touch'd, and broken slavery's chain; Yet, strange magician! she enslaves Our hearts within her own domain.

Her spirit is devout, and burns
With thoughts averse to bigotry;

Yet she herself, the idol, turns
Our thoughts into idolatry.

24

CORA LINN, OR THE FALLS OF THE

CLYDE.

WRITTEN ON REVISITING IT IN 1837.

THE time I saw thee, Cora, last,

"Twas with congenial friends;

And calmer hours of pleasure past

My memory seldom sends.

It was as sweet an Autumn day
As ever shone on Clyde,

And Lanark's orchards all the way

Put forth their golden pride;

Ev'n hedges, busk'd in bravery,
Look'd rich that sunny morn ;
The scarlet hip and blackberry
So prank'd September's thorn.

In Cora's glen the calm how deep!
That trees on loftiest hill
Like statues stood, or things asleep,
All motionless and still.

The torrent spoke, as if his noise
Bade earth be quiet round,
And give his loud and lonely voice
A more commanding sound.

His foam, beneath the yellow light Of noon, came down like one Continuous sheet of jaspers bright, Broad rolling by the sun.

Dear Linn! let loftier falling floods Have prouder names than thine; And king of all, enthroned in woods, Let Niagara shine.

Barbarian, let him shake his coasts
With reeking thunders far,
Extended like th' array of hosts
In broad, embattled war!

His voice appalls the wilderness :
Approaching thine, we feel
A solemn, deep melodiousness,
That needs no louder peal.

More fury would but disenchant
Thy dream-inspiring din;

Be thou the Scottish Muse's haunt,
Romantic Cora Linn.

CHAUCER AND WINDSOR.

LONG shalt thou flourish, Windsor! bodying forth
Chivalric times, and long shall live around
Thy Castle-the old oaks of British birth,
Whose gnarled roots, tenacious and profound,
As with a lion's talons grasp the ground.

But should thy towers in ivied ruin rot,
There's one, thine inmate once, whose strain
renown'd

Would interdict thy name to be forgot;

For Chaucer loved thy bowers and trode this very spot.

Chaucer! our Helicon's first fountain-stream,
Our morning star of song-that led the way
To welcome the long-after coming beam
Of Spenser's light and Shakspeare's perfect day.
Old England's fathers live in Chaucer's lay,
As if they ne'er had died. He group'd and drew
Their likeness with a spirit of life so gay,
That still they live and breathe in Fancy's view,
Fresh beings fraught with truth's imperishable

hue.

LINES

SUGGESTED BY THE STATUE OF ARNOLD VON

WINKELRIED,1 STANZ-UNDERWALDEN.

INSPIRING and romantic Switzers' land,
Though mark'd with majesty by Nature's hand,
What charm ennobles most thy landscape's face?
Th' heroic memory of thy native race—
Who forced tyrannic hosts to bleed or flee,
And made their rocks the ramparts of the free ;
Their fastnesses roll'd back th' invading tide
Of conquest, and their mountains taught them
pride.

Hence they have patriot names-in fancy's eye,
Bright as their glaciers glittering in the sky;
Patriots who make the pageantries of kings.
Like shadows seem and unsubstantial things.
Their guiltless glory mocks oblivion's rust,
Imperishable, for their cause was just.

Heroes of old! to whom the Nine have strung Their lyres, and spirit-stirring anthems sung;

1 For an account of this patriotic Swiss and his heroic death at the battle of Sempach, see Dr. Beattie's "Switzerland Illustrated," vol. ii. pp. 111–115.