Idle threats! I stand

Secure. All access to these battlements

Is barr'd beyond your sudden strength to force,
And lo! the dagger by which Fergus died!

Shame on you Scotchmen, that a woman's hand
Was left to do this deed! Shame on you Thanes,
Who with slave-patience have so long endured
The wrongs, the insolence of tyranny!

Ye coward race !-that not a husband's sword
Smote that adulterous King! that not a wife
Revenged her own pollution, in his blood
Wash'd her soul pure, and for the sin compell'd
Atoned by virtuous murder! oh my God!

Of what beast-matter hast thou moulded them
To bear with wrongs like these? there was a time
When if the Bard had feign'd you such a tale

Your eyes

had throbb'd with anger, and your hands In honest instinct would have graspt the sword. O miserable men who have disgraced

Your fathers, whom your sons must blush to name !

Aye-ye can threaten me! ye can be brave

In anger to a woman! one whose virtue

Upbraids your coward vice; whose name will live

Honoured and prais'd in song, when not a hand
Shall root from your forgotten monuments

The cankering moss.

Fools! fools! to think that death

Is not a thing familiar to my mind!

As if I knew not what must consummate
My glory! as if ought that earth can give
Could tempt me to endure the load of life!
Scotchmen! ye saw when Fergus to the altar
Led me, his maiden Queen. Ye blest me then,
I heard you bless me, and I thought that Heaven
Had heard you also and that I was blest,

For I loved Fergus. Bear me witness, God!
With what a sacred heart-sincerity

My lips pronounced the unrecallable vow

That made me his, him mine; bear witness Thou!
Before whose throne I this day must appear

Stain'd with his blood and mine! my heart was his-
His in the strength of all its first affections.

In all obedience, in all love, I kept

Holy my marriage vow. Behold me Thanes !
Time hath not changed the face on which his eye
So often dwelt, when with assiduous care

He sought my love, with seeming truth, for one,
Sincere herself, impossible to doubt.

Time hath not changed that face ;-I speak not now

With pride of beauties that will feed the worm
To morrow! but with joyful pride I say,

That if the truest and most perfect love
Deserved requital, such was ever mine.
How often reeking from the adulterous bed
Have I received him! and with no complaint.
Neglect and insult, cruelty and scorn

Long, long did I endure, and long curb down
The indignant nature.

Tell your countrymen, Scotchmen, what I have spoken-say to them Ye saw the Queen of Scotland lift the dagger Red from her husband's heart; that in her own

The SOLDIER's FUNERAL.

By ROBERT SOUTHEY.

It is the funeral march. I did not think
That there had been such magic in sweet sounds!
Hark! from the blacken'd cymbal that dead tone-
It awes the very rabble multitude,

They follow silently, their earnest brows

Lifted in solemn thought. "Tis not the pomp
And pageantry of death that with such force
Arrests the sense,—the mute and mourning train,
The white plume nodding o'er the sable hearse,
Had past unheeded, or perchance awoke

A serious smile upon the poor man's cheek

At pride's last triumph. Now these measur'd sounds

This universal language, to the heart

Speak instant, and on all these various minds
Compel one feeling.

Will

But such better thoughts

pass away, how soon! and these who here Are following their dead comrade to the grave, Ere the night fall, will in their revelry

Quench all remembrance. From the ties of life
Unnaturally rent, a man who knew

No resting place, no dear delights of home,
Belike who never saw his children's face,
Whose children knew no father, he is gone,
Dropt from existence, like the withered leaf
That from the summer tree is swept away,
Its loss unseen. She hears not of his death
Who bore him, and already for her son
Her tears of bitterness are shed: when first
He had put on the livery of blood,

She wept him dead to her.

We are indeed

Clay in the potter's hand! one favour'd mind
Scarce lower than the Angels, shall explore
The ways of Nature, whilst his fellow-man
Fram'd with like miracle the work of God,
Must as the unreasonable beast drag on
A life of labour, like this soldier here,
His wonderous faculties bestow'd in vain,
Be moulded by his fate till he becomes
A mere machine of murder.