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VI. RECITATIVE.

Foremost and leaning from her golden cloud
The venerable Marg’ret see!

"Welcome, my noble son, (she cries aloud)
To this, thy kindred train, and me:
Pleas'd in thy lineaments we trace
A Tudor's fire, a Beaufort's grace.

AIR.

Thy liberal heart, thy judging eye,
The flow'r unheeded shall descry,
And bid it round heav'n's altars shed
The fragrance of its blushing head:
Shall raise from earth the latent gem
To glitter on the diadem.

In still small accents whisp'ring from the ground
A grateful earnest of eternal peace." W.

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"Now in a still small tone

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Your dying accents fall." Dryd. Edip. act ii. V. 65. A voice from midst a golden cloud thus mild was heard." Milt. P. L. vi. 27. Luke.

V. 66. Countess of Richmond and Derby; the mother of Henry the Seventh, foundress of St. John's and Christ's Colleges. Gray.

V. 70. The Countess was a Beaufort, and married to a Tudor: hence the application of this line to the Duke of Grafton, who claims descent from both these families.

V. 71. "Dryden alone escaped his judging eye."

Gray.

Pope. Prol. to the Sat. 246. Also: "A face untaught to feign, a judging eye." Pope. Epist. to Craggs, p. 289. "A liberal heart and free from gall." Fuller. Abel Red. p. 314.

V. 72. This allusion to the flower and the gem we meet with again in the Elegy.

392. 66

V. 73. "Delubra, et aras cœlitum," Senec. Agam. v. Coloque educitur ara," Sil. Ital. xv. 388. "Araque Divorum," Manil. Astr. v. 18.

VII. RECITATIVE.

"Lo! Granta waits to lead her blooming band,

Not obvious, not obtrusive, she

No vulgar praise, no venal incense flings;
Nor dares with courtly tongue refin'd
Profane thy inborn royalty of mind:
She reveres herself and thee.

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With modest pride to grace thy youthful brow, The laureate wreath, that Cecil wore, she brings, And to thy just, thy gentle hand,

V. 78. "Not obvious, not obtrusive, but retired,"

Par. L. viii. 504. W.

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V. 79. "No hireling she, no prostitute for praise," Pope. Epist. to Lord Oxford, v. 36. W. V. 82. Πάντων δὲ μάλιστ ̓ αἰσχύνεο σαυτόν, Pythag. Aur. v. 12. W.-And so Galen. De Curatione Morb. Animi:” Σὺ δὲ σαυτὸν αἰδοῦ μάλιστα.

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V. 83. "Yielded with coy submission, modest pride," Par. Lost, iv. 310. V. 84. Lord Treasurer Burleigh was chancellor of the University in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Gray. Milt. Son. xvi. 8. "And Worcester's laureate wreath." Luke.

V. 85. Par. Lost, b. iv. 308, "gentle sway," from Horace, "lenibus imperiis," Epist. I. xviii. 44. W.—But the sentiment, as well as expression, was taken from Dryden. Thr. August. 284:

"And with a willing hand restores

The fasces of the main."

Add Milton. Eleg. i. 67: "Vos etiam Danae fasces submittite nymphæ." Luke. "With the submitted fasces of the main." Dryden. Astræa. Red.

V. 88. See Par. Lost, vii. 559.

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V. 89. "Well knows to still the wild waves when they roar." Comus, v. 87. W. The wild waves mastered him." Dryden. An. Mirabilis.

V. 92.

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Neque altum

Semper urguendo, neque, dum procellas
Cautus horrescis, nimium premendo
Littus iniquum."

Submits the fasces of her sway,

While spirits blest above and men below
Join with glad voice the loud symphonious lay.

VIII. GRAND CHORUS.

"Thro' the wild waves as they roar,
With watchful eye and dauntless mien,

Thy steady course of honour keep,
Nor fear the rocks, nor seek the shore:
The star of Brunswick smiles serene,
And gilds the horrors of the deep."

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Nor let her tempt that deep, Prior. Ode.

Hor. Od. II. x. v. 1. W. nor make the shore."

V. 93. Pope, in his Essay on Criticism, has a similarly beautiful image, v. 645:

"The mighty Stagyrite first left the shore,

Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore;
He steer'd securely, and discover'd far,

Led by the light of the Mæonian star."

Young, in his "Universal Passion," Sat. vii. v. 169:

"And outwatch every star, for Brunswick's sake."

THE FATAL SISTERS.

AN ODE. FROM THE NORSE TONGUE.

To be found in the Orcades of Thormodus Torfæus ; Hafniæ, 1697, folio; and also in Bartholinus, p. 617. lib. iii. c. 1. 4to. (The song of the Weird Sisters, translated from the Norwegian, written about 1029. Wharton, мs.)

Vitt er orpit fyrir valfalli, &c.

In the eleventh century Sigurd, earl of the Orkney Islands, went with a fleet of ships and a considerable body of troops into Ireland, to the assistance of Sictryg with the Silken beard, who was then making war on his father-inlaw Brian, king of Dublin: the earl and all his forces were cut to pieces, and Sictryg was in danger of a total defeat; but the enemy had a greater loss by the death of Brian their king, who fell in the action. On Christmas day (the day of the battle), a native of Caithness in Scotland, of the name of Darrud, saw at a distance a number of persons on horseback riding full speed towards a hill, and seeming to enter into it. Curiosity led him to follow them, till looking through an opening in the rocks, he saw twelve gigantic figures resembling women: they were all employed about a loom; and as they wove, they sung the following dreadful song; which when they had finished, they tore the web into twelve pieces, and (each taking her portion) galloped six to the north, and as many to the south. These were

the Valkyriur, female divinities, Parcæ Militares, servants of Odin (or Woden) in the Gothic mythology. Their name signifies Chusers of the slain. They were mounted on swift horses, with drawn swords in their hands; and in the throng of battle selected such as were destined to slaughter, and conducted them to Valkalla, the hall of Odin, or paradise of the brave; where they attended the banquet, and served the departed heroes with horns of mead and ale: their numbers are not agreed upon, some authors representing them as six, some as four. See Magni Beronii diss. de Eddis Islandicis, p. 145, in Ælrichs. Dan. et Sued lit. opuscula, vol. i.

Now the storm begins to lower,
(Haste, the loom of hell prepare,)
Iron sleet of arrowy shower

Hurtles in the darken'd air.

Glitt❜ring lances are the loom,

Where the dusky warp we strain,
Weaving many a soldier's doom,
Orkney's woe, and Randver's bane.

Var. V. 5. Launces. Ms.

V. 3.

"How quick they wheel'd, and, flying, behind them shot Sharp sleet of arrowy show'r." Par. Reg. iii. 324. Gray. Avianus has a similar expression : "Ausa pharetratis imbribus ista loqui," Fab. xli. v. 6. "Sic et imbrem ferreum dicunt, cum volunt multitudinem significare telorum," Lactant. Epitome, c. xi. Virg. Æn. xii. 284: “ Tempestas telorum ac ferreus ingruit imber." Many other examples could be given.

Thick storms of bullets ran like winter's hail,
And shiver'd lances dark the troubled air."

Spanish Trag. Vid. Hawkins. Ant. Drama. V. 4. "The noise of battle hurtled in the air."

Julius Cæsar, act ii. s. 2. Gray. V. 7. In Thomson. Masque of Alfred, p. 126, the weaving of the enchanted standard is thus described:

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Wrought by the sisters of the Danish king,
Of furious Ivar, in a midnight hour,
While the sick moon, at their enchanted song
Wrapt in pale tempest, labour'd thro' the clouds.
The demons of destruction then, (they say,)
Were all abroad, and mixing with the woof
Their baleful power; the Sisters even sung,

'Shake, standard, shake, this ruin on our foes!':

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