THE DANCE OF DEATH.

TIGHT and morning were at meeting

NIGHT

Over Waterloo :

Cocks had sung their earliest greeting,
Faint and low they crew,

For no paly beam yet shone

On the heights of Mount Saint John;
Tempest-clouds prolonged the sway
Of timeless darkness over day;
Whirlwind, thunder-clap, and shower
Marked it a predestined hour.
Broad and frequent through the night
Flashed the sheets of levin-light:
Muskets, glancing lightnings back,
Showed the dreary bivouac
Where the soldier lay,

Chill and stiff, and drenched with rain,
Wishing dawn of morn again,

Though death should come with day.
"T is at such a tide and hour,
Wizard, witch, and fiend have power,
And ghastly forms through mist and shower,
Gleam on the gifted ken;

And then the affrighted prophet's ear

Drinks whispers strange of fate and fear,

Presaging death and ruin near

Among the sons of men;

Apart from Albyn's war-array,

'T was then gray Allan sleepless lay;

Gray Allan, who, for many a day,
Had followed stout and stern,

Where through battle's rout and reel,
Storm of shot and hedge of steel,
Led the grandson of Lochiel,

Valiant Fassiefern.

Through steel and shot he leads no more,
Low-laid mid friends' and foemen's gore,-
But long his native lake's wild shore,
And Sunart rough, and high Ardgower,
And Morven long shall tell,

And proud Ben Nevis hear with awe,
How, upon bloody Quatre-Bras,
Brave Cameron heard the wild hurra
Of conquest as he fell.

Lone on the outskirts of the host,
The weary sentinel held post,

And heard, through darkness far aloof,

The frequent clang of courser's hoof,

Where held the cloaked patrol their course;

And spurred 'gainst storm the swerving horse; But there are sounds in Allan's ear,

Patrol nor sentinel may hear,

And sights before his eye aghast
Invisible to them have passed,

When down the destined plain
"Twixt Britain and the bands of France,
Wild as marsh-born meteors glance,
Strange phantoms wheeled a revel dance,
And doomed the future slain.

Such forms were seen, such sounds were heard,
When Scotland's James his march prepared
For Flodden's fatal plain;

Such, when he drew his ruthless sword,
As choosers of the slain, adored
The yet unchristened Dane.
An indistinct and phantom band,

They wheeled their ring-dance hand in hand,
With gesture wild and dread;

The seer, who watched them ride the storm,
Saw through their faint and shadowy form
The lightnings flash more red;
And still their ghastly roundelay
Was of the coming battle-fray
And of the destined dead.

Sir Walter Scott.

SOUTHY

THE FIELD OF BATTLE.

THWARD from Brussels lies the field of blood, Some three hours' journey for a well-girt man; A horseman who in haste pursued his road

Would reach it as the second hour began. The way is through a forest deep and wide, Extending many a mile on either side.

No cheerful woodland this of antic trees

With thickets varied and with sunny glade; Look where he will, the weary traveller sees One gloomy, thick, impenetrable shade

Of tall straight trunks, which move before his sight, With interchange of lines of long green light.

Here, where the woods receding from the road
Have left on either hand an open space
For fields and gardens and for man's abode,

Stands Waterloo; a little lowly place,
Obscure till now, when it hath risen to fame,
And given the victory its English name.

Robert Southey.

ON THE DRAWING OF THE ELM-TREE

UNDER WHICH THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON STOOD SEVERAL TIMES DURING THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO,

there one heart that beats on English ground, One grateful spirit in the kingdoms round;

One who had traced the progress of the foe,
And does not hail the field of Waterloo?
Who o'er that field, if but in thought, has gone,
Without a grateful wish for Wellington?

Within that field of glory rose a tree

(Which a fair hand has given us here to see), A noble tree, that, pierced by many a ball, Fell not,

decreed in time of peace to fall:

Nor shall it die unsung; for there shall be

In many a noble verse the praise of thee,

With that heroic chief, - renowned and glorious tree!

Men shall divide thee, and thy smallest part
Shall be to warm and stir the English heart;
Formed into shapes as fancy may design,

In all fair fame and honor shall be thine.
The noblest ladies in the land with joy
Shall own thy value in the slightest toy;
Preserved through life, it shall a treasure prove,
And left to friends, a legacy of love.

And thou, fair semblance of that tree sublime,
Shalt a memorial be to distant time;

Shalt wake a grateful sense in every heart,
And noble thoughts to opening minds impart;
Who shall hereafter learn what deeds were done,
What nations freed by Heaven and Wellington.

Heroic tree we surely this may call,

Wounded it fell, and numbers mourned its fall;
It fell for many here, but there it stood for all.
George Crabbe.

SONG.

HEN Napoleon was flying

WH

From the field of Waterloo,

A British soldier, dying,

To his brother bade adieu !

"And take," he said, "this token

To the maid that owns my faith,
With the words that I have spoken
In affection's latest breath."

Sore mourned the brother's heart,

When the youth beside him fell;