Or dream of greeting, peace, or truce,
With excommunicated Bruce!
Yet will I grant to end debate,
Thy sainted voice decide his fate."

The Abbot seemed with eye severe
The hardy chieftain's speech to hear;
Then on King Robert turned the
Monk,

But twice his courage came and sunk,

Confronted with the hero's look;
Twice fell his eye, his accents shook;
Like man by prodigy amazed,
Upon the King the Abbot gazed;
Then o'er his pallid features glance
Convulsions of ecstatic trance;
His breathing came more thick and
fast,

And from his pale blue eyes were cast

Strange rays of wild and wandering light;

Uprise his locks of silver white, Flushed is his brow; through every vein

In azure tide the currents strain, And undistinguished accents broke The awful silence ere he spoke.

But, like the Midianite of old,
Who stood on Zophim, heaven-con-
trolled,

I feel within mine aged breast
A power that will not be repressed.
It prompts my voice, it swells my
veins,

It burns, it maddens, it constrains!De Bruce, thy sacrilegious blow . Hath at God's altar slain thy foe: O'ermastered yet by high behest, I bless thee, and thou shalt be blessed!"

He spoke, and o'er the astonished throng

Was silence, awful, deep, and long.

Again that light has fired his eye,
Again his form swells bold and high,
The broken voice of age is gone,
'Tis

vigorous manhood's lofty

tone:

A hunted wanderer on the wild,
On foreign shores a man exiled,
Disowned, deserted, and distressed,-
I bless thee, and thou shalt be
blessed!

Blessed in the hall and in the field,
Under the mantle as the shield.
Avenger of thy country's shame,
Restorer of her injured fame,
Blessed in thy sceptre and thy
sword,

De Bruce, fair Scotland's rightful Lord,

Blessed in thy deeds and in thy fame, What lengthened honors wait thy name!

In distant ages, sire to son

Shall tell thy tale of freedom won,
And teach his infants, in the use
Of earliest speech. to falter Bruce.
Go, then, triumphant! sweep along
Thy course, the theme of many a
song!

The Power, whose dictates swell my breast,

Hath blessed thee, and thou shalt be blessed!"

"Let the men of lore appear,

The wisest of the earth,
And expound the words of fear,
Which mar our royal mirth."

Chaldæa's seers are good,

But here they have no skill;
And the unknown letters stood,
Untold and awful still.
And Babel's men of age

Are wise and deep in lore;
But now they were not sage,
They saw, but knew no more.

A captive in the land,

A stranger and a youth, -
He heard the king's command,
He saw that writing's truth.
The lamps around were bright,
The prophecy in view:
He read it on that night,

The morrow proved it true.

"Belshazzar's grave is made, His kingdom passed away, He in the balance weighed,

Is light and worthless clay. The shroud, his robe of state; His canopy, the stone; The Mede is at his gate!

The Persian on his throne!"

BYRON.

SIR PAVON AND ST. PAVON.

PART I.

ST. MARK's hushed abbey heard, Through prayers, a roar and din; A brawling voice did shout,

"Knave shaveling, let me in!"

The cagèd porter peeped,

All fluttering, through the grate, Like birds that hear a mew.

A knight was at the gate.

His left hand reined his steed,

Still smoking from the ford; His crimson right, that dangled, clutched

Half of his broken sword.

His broken plume flapped low;
His charger's mane with mud
Was clogged; he wavered in his seat;
His mail dropped drops of blood.

"Now wilt thou let me in,

Or shall I burst the door?"

The grating bolts ground back; the knight

Lay swooning in his gore.

As children, half afraid,

Draw near a crushèd wasp, Look, touch, and twitch away Their hands, then lightly grasp, —

Him to their spital soon

The summoned brethren bore, And searched his wounds. He woke, And roundly cursed and swore.

The younger friar stopped his ears;
The elder chid. He flung

His gummy plasters at his mouth,
And bade him hold his tongue.

But, faint and weak, when, left
Upon his couch alone,

He viewed the valley, framed within

His window's carven stone,

He learned anew to weep,
All as he lay along,

To see the smoke-wreaths from his

towers

Climb up the clouds among.

The abbot came to bring

A balsam to his guest, On soft feet tutored long

To break no sufferer's rest,

And heard his sobbing heart

Drink deep in draughts of woe; Then "Benedicite, my son,"

He breathed, in murmurs low.

Right sharply turned the knight
Upon the unwelcome spy;

But changed his shaggy face, as

when,

Down through a stormy sky,