Songs In Many Keys | Page 5

bruised her tender breasts
Against the crushing stone,

That still the strong-armed clown protests
No man can lift alone,--
Oh! then the frozen spring was broke;
By turns she wept and
smiled;--
"Sweet Agnes!" so the mother spoke,
"God bless my
angel child
"She saved thee from the jaws of death,--
'T is thine to right her
wrongs;
I tell thee,--I, who gave thee breath,--
To her thy life
belongs!"
Thus Agnes won her noble name,
Her lawless lover's hand;
The
lowly maiden so became
A lady in the land!
PART SIXTH
CONCLUSION
The tale is done; it little needs
To track their after ways,
And string

again the golden beads
Of love's uncounted days.
They leave the fair ancestral isle
For bleak New England's shore;

How gracious is the courtly smile
Of all who frowned before!
Again through Lisbon's orange bowers
They watch the river's gleam,

And shudder as her shadowy towers
Shake in the trembling stream.
Fate parts at length the fondest pair;
His cheek, alas! grows pale;

The breast that trampling death could spare
His noiseless shafts
assail.
He longs to change the heaven of blue
For England's clouded sky,--

To breathe the air his boyhood knew;
He seeks then but to die.
Hard by the terraced hillside town,
Where healing streamlets run,

Still sparkling with their old renown,--
The "Waters of the Sun,"--
The Lady Agnes raised the stone
That marks his honored grave,

And there Sir Harry sleeps alone
By Wiltshire Avon's wave.
The home of early love was dear;
She sought its peaceful shade,

And kept her state for many a year,
With none to make afraid.
At last the evil days were come
That saw the red cross fall;
She
hears the rebels' rattling drum,--
Farewell to Frankland Hall!
I tell you, as my tale began,
The hall is standing still;
And you, kind
listener, maid or man,
May see it if you will.
The box is glistening huge and green,
Like trees the lilacs grow,

Three elms high-arching still are seen,
And one lies stretched below.
The hangings, rough with velvet flowers,
Flap on the latticed wall;

And o'er the mossy ridge-pole towers
The rock-hewn chimney tall.

The doors on mighty hinges clash
With massive bolt and bar,
The
heavy English-moulded sash
Scarce can the night-winds jar.
Behold the chosen room he sought
Alone, to fast and pray,
Each
year, as chill November brought
The dismal earthquake day.
There hung the rapier blade he wore,
Bent in its flattened sheath;

The coat the shrieking woman tore
Caught in her clenching teeth;--
The coat with tarnished silver lace
She snapped at as she slid,
And
down upon her death-white face
Crashed the huge coffin's lid.
A graded terrace yet remains;
If on its turf you stand
And look
along the wooded plains
That stretch on either hand,
The broken forest walls define
A dim, receding view,
Where, on the
far horizon's line,
He cut his vista through.
If further story you shall crave,
Or ask for living proof,
Go see old
Julia, born a slave
Beneath Sir Harry's roof.
She told me half that I have told,
And she remembers well
The
mansion as it looked of old
Before its glories fell;--
The box, when round the terraced square
Its glossy wall was drawn;

The climbing vines, the snow-balls fair,
The roses on the lawn.
And Julia says, with truthful look
Stamped on her wrinkled face,

That in her own black hands she took
The coat with silver lace.
And you may hold the story light,
Or, if you like, believe;
But there
it was, the woman's bite,--
A mouthful from the sleeve.
Now go your ways;--I need not tell
The moral of my rhyme;
But,
youths and maidens, ponder well
This tale of olden time!

THE PLOUGHMAN
ANNIVERSARY OF THE BERKSHIRE
AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY,
OCTOBER 4, 1849
CLEAR the brown path, to meet his coulter's gleam!
Lo! on he comes,
behind his smoking team,
With toil's bright dew-drops on his
sunburnt brow,
The lord of earth, the hero of the plough!
First in the field before the reddening sun,
Last in the shadows when
the day is done,
Line after line, along the bursting sod,
Marks the
broad acres where his feet have trod;
Still, where he treads, the
stubborn clods divide,
The smooth, fresh furrow opens deep and wide;

Matted and dense the tangled turf upheaves,
Mellow and dark the
ridgy cornfield cleaves;
Up the steep hillside, where the laboring train

Slants the long track that scores the level plain;
Through the moist
valley, clogged with oozing clay,
The patient convoy breaks its
destined way;
At every turn the loosening chains resound,
The
swinging ploughshare circles glistening round,
Till the wide field one
billowy waste appears,
And wearied hands unbind the panting steers.
These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings
The peasant's food, the
golden pomp of kings;
This is the page, whose letters shall be seen

Changed by the sun to words of living green;
This is the scholar,
whose immortal pen
Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men;

These are the lines which heaven-commanded Toil
Shows on his
deed,--the charter of the soil
O gracious Mother, whose benignant breast
Wakes us to life, and
lulls us all to rest,
How thy sweet features, kind to every clime,

Mock with their smile the wrinkled front of time
We stain thy
flowers,--they blossom o'er the dead;
We rend thy bosom, and it gives
us bread;
O'er the red field that