XXI. -- SAME SUBJECT, CONCLUDED.

WITH that, straight up the hill there rode
Two horsemen drench'd with gore,

And in their arms, a helpless load,

A wounded knight they bore.

5 His hand still strain'd the broken brand; His arms were smear'd with blood and sand: Dragg'd from among the horses' feet, With dinted shield, and helmet beat, The falcon-crest and plumage gone, 10 Can that be haughty Marmion!... When, doff'd his casque, he felt free air,

Around 'gan Marmion wildly stare:

66

'Where's Harry Blount? Fitz Eustace where? Linger ye here, ye hearts of hare!

15 Redeem my pennon,

20

Cry- Marmion to the rescue!'- vain!

Last of my race, on battle-plain
That shout shall ne'er be heard again!
Yet my last thought is England's-fly,
To Dacre bear my signet-ring:

Tell him his squadrons up to bring.-
Fitz Eustace, to Lord Surrey hie;
Tunstall lies dead upon the field,

His life-blood stains the spotless shield: 25 Edmund is down:- my life is reft; The Admiral alone is left.

Let Stanley charge with spur of fire,
With Chester charge and Lancashire,
Full upon Scotland's central host,

30 Or victory and England's lost.

Must I bid twice?—hence, varlets! fly!

Leave Marmion here, alone - to die!"

They parted, and alone he lay:

Clare drew her from the sight away,

Till pain wrung forth a lowly moan,
And half he murmured, Is there none

166

Of all my halls have nurst,

Page, squire, or groom, one cup to bring 5 Of blessed water from the spring,

To slake my dying thirst!"
O, woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade

10 By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou! -

15

Scarce were the piteous accents said,
When, with the Baron's casque, the maid
To the nigh streamlet ran:

Forgot were hatred, wrongs, and fears;
The plaintive voice alone she hears,
Sees but the dying man.

She fill'd the helm, and back she hied, 20 And with surprise and joy espied

A monk supporting Marmion's head;
A pious man whom duty brought
To dubious verge of battle fought,

To shrive the dying, bless the dead.
25 The war, that for a space did fail,
Now trebly thundering swell'd the gale,

And-Stanley! was the cry;-.
A light on Marmion's visage spread,
And fired his glazing eye:

30 With dying hand, above his head,
He shook the fragment of his blade,
And shouted, "Victory!

Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on !"

Were the last words of Marmion.

35 By this, though deep the evening fell,

Still rose the battle's deadly swell,

For still the Scots, around their king,
Unbroken, fought in desperate ring.
The English shafts in volleys hail'd,
In headlong charge their horse assail'd,
5 Front, flank, and rear, the squadrons sweep,
To break the Scottish circle deep,

That fought around their king.

But yet, though thick the shafts as snow, Though charging knights like whirlwinds go, 10 Though billmen ply the ghastly blow, Unbroken was the ring;

15

The stubborn spearmen still made good
Their dark impenetrable wood,

Each stepping where his comrade stood,
The instant that he fell.

No thought was there of dastard flight;
Link'd in the serried phalanx tight,
Groom fought like noble, squire like knight
As fearlessly and well;

20 Till utter darkness closed her wing
O'er their thin host and wounded king.
Then skilful Surrey's sage commands
Led back from strife his shattered bands;
And from the charge they drew,
25 As mountain-waves, from wasted lands,
Sweep back to ocean blue.

Then did their loss his foeman know;
Their king, their lords, their mightiest, low,
They melted from the field as snow,

30 When streams are swoln, and south winds blow Dissolves in silent dew.

Tweed's echoes heard the ceaseless plash,
While many a broken band,

Disorder'd, through her currents dash,
To gain the Scottish land;

To town and tower, to down and dale,
To tell red Flodden's dismal tale
And raise the universal wail.
Tradition, legend, tune, and song,
5 Shall many an age that wail prolong;
Still from the sire the son shall hear
Of the stern strife, and carnage drear,
Of Flodden's fatal field,

Where shivered was fair Scotland's spear,
And broken was her shield!

(HENRY WARD BEECHER was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, June 24, 1813, graduated at Amherst College in 1834, studied theology under his father, the Rev. Lyman Beecher, and since 1847 has been pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, N. Y. He is an eloquent and effective preacher, and as a lecturer to the people he enjoys an unrivalled popularity, earned by the happy combi nation of humor, pathos, earnestness, and genial sympathy with humanity, which his discourses present. He is a man of great energy of temperament, fervently opposed to every form of oppression and injustice, and with a poet's love of nature. His style is rich, glowing, and exuberant. The following extract is from the "Star Papers," a volume made up of papers which originally appeared in the "New York Independent."]

ONCE more I am upon this serene hill-top! The air is very clear, very still, and very solemn, or, rather, tenderly sad, in its serene brightness. It is not that moist spring air, full of the smell of wood, of the soil, and of the odor 5 of vegetation, which warm winds bring to us from the south. It is not that summer atmosphere, full of alternations of haze and fervent clearness, as if Nature were calling into life every day some influence for her myriad children; sometimes in showers, and sometimes with coer10 cive heat upon root and leaf; and, like a universal taskmaster, were driving up the hours to accomplish the labors of the year.

No! In these autumn days there is a sense of leisure

and of meditation. The sun seems to look down upon the labors of its fiery hands with complacency. Be satisfied, O seasonable Sun! Thou hast shaped an ample year, and art garnering up harvests which well may swell thy re5 joicing heart with gracious gladness.

One who breaks off in summer, and returns in autumn to the hills, needs almost to come to a new acquaintance with the most familiar things. It is another world; or it is the old world a-masquerading; and you halt, like one 10 scrutinizing a disguised friend, between the obvious dis semblance and the subtile likeness.

Southward of our front door there stood two elms, leaning their branches toward each other, forming a glorious arch of green. Now, in faint yellow, they grow 15 attenuated and seem as if departing; they are losing their leaves and fading out of sight, as trees do in twilight. Yonder, over against that young growth of birch and evergreen, stood, all summer long, a perfect maple-tree, rounded out on every side, thick with luxuriant foliage, and dark 20 with greenness, save when the morning sun, streaming through it, sent transparency to its very heart. Now it is a tower of gorgeous red. So sober and solemn did it seem all summer, that I should think as soon to see a prophet dancing at a peasant's holiday, as it transfigured 25 to such intense gayety! Its fellows, too, the birches and the walnuts, burn from head to foot with fires that glow but never consume.

But these holiday hills! Have the evening clouds, suffused with sunset, dropped down and become fixed into 30 solid forms? Have the rainbows that followed autumn storms faded upon the mountains and left their mantles there? Yet, with all their brilliancy, how modest do they seem; how patient when bare, or burdened with winter; how cheerful when flushed with summer-green; and how 35 modest when they lift up their wreathed and crowned heads in the resplendent days of autumn!