Strike! for the green graves of your sires;
God, and your native land!"

They fought like brave men, long and well;

They piled that ground with Moslem slain; They conquer'd;-but Bozzaris fell,

Bleeding at every vein.

His few surviving comrades saw

His smile when rang their loud hurrah,
And the red field was won;

Then saw in death his eyelids close,
Calmly as to a night's repose,—
Like flowers at set of sun.

Bozzaris! with the storied brave

Greece nurtured in her glory's time,
Rest thee: there is no prouder grave,
Even in her own proud clime.
She wore no funeral weeds for thee,

Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume,
Like torn branch from death's leafless tree,
In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,

The heartless luxury of the tomb;

But she remembers thee as one

Long loved, and for a season gone;

For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed;
Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
For thee she rings the birthday bells;
Of thee her babes' first lisping tells;

When Banners

are

Waving

When Banners

are

Waving

For thee her evening prayer is said.
At palace-couch and cottage-bed;
Her soldier, closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;
His plighted maiden, when she fears
For him, the joy of her young years,
Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears;

And she, the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,
The memory of her buried joys,—
And even she who gave thee birth
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,
Talk of thy doom without a sigh;
For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's,
One of the few, th' immortal names
That were not born to die.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

The Destruction of Sennacherib

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and

gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the

sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is

green,

That host with their banners at sunset were

seen:

Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath

blown,

That host on the morrow lay wither'd and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the
blast,

And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and

chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride;

And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,

And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his
mail;

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

When Banners

are

Waving

When And the widows of Ashur are loud in their

Banners

are

Waving

wail,

And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal!
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the

sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the
Lord!

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON.

Tales of the Olden Time

These ancient ballads have come down to us from the long ago, having been told, like the old nursery tales, from generation to generation, altered, abbreviated, patched, and added to, as they passed from mouth to mouth of poet, high harper, gleeman, wandering minstrel, balladmonger, and camp-follower. Some of them were repeated by the humble stroller who paid for a corner in the chimney-nook by the practice of his rude art; others were sung by minstrels of the court; most of them were chanted to a tune which served for a score of similar songs, while the verses were frequently interrupted by refrains of one sort or another, as, for instance, in Hynde Horn," which is sometimes printed as follows:

"Near the King's Court was a young child born
With a hey lillalu and a how lo lan;

And his name it was called Young Hynde Horn
And the birk and the broom blooms bonnie."

Many of the ballads are gloomy and tragic stories, but told simply and with right feeling; others are gay tales of true love ending happily. Some, like "Sir Patrick Spens" and "Chevy Chace," are built upon historical foundations, and others, while not following history, have a real personage for hero or heroine. Lord Beichan, for instance, is supposed to be Gilbert Becket, father of the famous Saint Thomas of Canterbury, while Glenlogie is Sir George, one of the "gay Gordons," but whoever they are, wise abbots, jolly friars, or noble outlaws, they are always bold fellows, true lovers, and merry men.

Inconsequent, fascinating, high-handed, impossible, picturesque, these old ballads have come to us from the childhood of the world, and still speak to the childheart in us all.