By us together spent ;

Strewed with the thornless flowers

Of pangless merriment.

In memory, too, of some,

When clouds were in our sky;

When hearts with grief were dumb,
And tears were in each eye!

For the bitter, and the sweet,

Which endear alike " lang syne,"

Hearts like your own will greet

This trivial gift of mine.

The life we live on earth

Is dark and bright by turns;

And in sorrow, or in mirth,

Few bards can equal Burns!

FRAMLINGHAM CASTLE.

FALLEN as thou art, dismantled pile!
From thy once palmy state;
Thy ruins may outlast a while
Splendours of later date.

Still stand thy battlemented towers,
Firm as in by-gone years;
As if within yet ruled the powers
Of England's haughtiest peers.

Since thou, by kings or nobles proud,

Wert first upreared and swayed,

Piles grand as thou their heads have bowed In dark oblivion's shade :

196

FRAMLINGHAM CASTLE.

And glittering structures, richly dight,
Have, long since thy decline,
Crumbled away, and left no site
Their memory to enshrine.

But thou, at least to distant view,
Still bear'st a gallant form;
Thy canopy-heaven's vault of blue,
Or crest-the lowering storm.

Still upon moat and mere below
Thine ivied towers look down;
And far their giant shadows throw
With feudal grandeur's frown.

And though thy star for aye be set,
Thy glory past and gone,

Fancy might deem thine inmate yet
BIGOD! Or BROTHERTON!

Or HOWARD brave, who fought and died

On Bosworth's bloody field;

Or bigot Mary, who the tide

Of martyr-blood unsealed!

FRAMLINGHAM CASTLE.

Such were thine inmates! Who are left

As dwellers in thy hold?
The abject, and the hope-bereft,
The helpless, poor, and old!

Yet, haply, among these may be
Some, to the world unknown,
Who hold a higher hope in fee,
Than Mary on her throne!

197

HELMINGHAM HALL.

"The stately homes of England !
How beautiful they stand,
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
O'er all the pleasant land!"

HEMANS.

SUCH is this ancient moated Hall

And on it as I fondly gaze, Well may it unto thought recall The visions of departed days.

Imagination might, at will,

;

Bring back its revelry and mirth;

And people its apartments still

With inmates proud, of noble birth.