| |
| HOME of the Percys’ high-born race, | |
| Home of their beautiful and brave, | |
| Alike their birth and burial place, | |
| Their cradle and their grave! | |
| Still sternly o’er the castle gate | 5 |
| Their house’s Lion stands in state, | |
| As in his proud departed hours; | |
| And warriors frown in stone on high, | |
| And feudal banners “flout the sky” | |
| Above his princely towers. | 10 |
| |
| A gentle hill its side inclines, | |
| Lovely in England’s fadeless green, | |
| To meet the quiet stream which winds | |
| Through this romantic scene | |
| As silently and sweetly still | 15 |
| As when, at evening, on that hill, | |
| While summer’s wind blew soft and low, | |
| Seated by gallant Hotspur’s side, | |
| His Katherine was a happy bride, | |
| A thousand years ago. | 20 |
| |
| I wandered through the lofty halls | |
| Trod by the Percys of old fame, | |
| And traced upon the chapel walls | |
| Each high, heroic name, | |
| From him who once his standard set | 25 |
| Where now, o’er mosque and minaret, | |
| Glitter the Sultan’s crescent moons, | |
| To him who, when a younger son, | |
| Fought for King George at Lexington, | |
| A major of dragoons. | 30 |
| |
| That last half-stanza,—it has dashed | |
| From my warm lips the sparkling cup; | |
| The light that o’er my eyebeam flashed, | |
| The power that bore my spirit up | |
| Above this bank-note world, is gone; | 35 |
| And Alnwick ’s but a market town, | |
| And this, alas! its market day, | |
| And beasts and borderers throng the way; | |
| Oxen and bleating lambs in lots, | |
| Northumbrian boors and plaided Scots, | 40 |
| Men in the coal and cattle line; | |
| From Teviot’s bard and hero land, | |
| From royal Berwick’s beach of sand, | |
| From Wooller, Morpeth, Hexham, and | |
| Newcastle-upon-Tyne. | 45 |
| |
| These are not the romantic times | |
| So beautiful in Spenser’s rhymes, | |
| So dazzling to the dreaming boy; | |
| Ours are the days of fact, not fable, | |
| Of knights, but not of the round table, | 50 |
| Of Bailie Jarvie, not Rob Roy; | |
| ’T is what “Our President,” Monroe, | |
| Has called “the era of good feeling;” | |
| The Highlander, the bitterest foe | |
| To modern laws, has felt their blow, | 55 |
| Consented to be taxed, and vote, | |
| And put on pantaloons and coat, | |
| And leave off cattle-stealing: | |
| Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt, | |
| The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt, | 60 |
| The Douglas in red herrings; | |
| And noble name and cultured land, | |
| Palace, and park, and vassal band, | |
| Are powerless to the notes of hand | |
| Of Rothschilds or the Barings. | 65 |
| |
| The age of bargaining, said Burke, | |
| Has come: to-day the turbaned Turk | |
| (Sleep, Richard of the lion heart! | |
| Sleep on, nor from your cerements start) | |
| Is England’s friend and fast ally; | 70 |
| The Moslem tramples on the Greek, | |
| And on the Cross and altar-stone, | |
| And Christendom looks tamely on, | |
| And hears the Christian maiden shriek, | |
| And sees the Christian father die; | 75 |
| And not a sabre-blow is given | |
| For Greece and fame, for faith and heaven, | |
| By Europe’s craven chivalry. | |
| |
| You ’ll ask if yet the Percy lives | |
| In the armed pomp of feudal state. | 80 |
| The present representatives | |
| Of Hotspur and his “gentle Kate,” | |
| Are some half-dozen serving-men | |
| In the drab coat of William Penn; | |
| A chambermaid, whose lip and eye, | 85 |
| And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling | |
| Spoke Nature’s aristocracy; | |
| And one, half groom, half seneschal, | |
| Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall, | |
| From donjon keep to turret wall, | 90 |
| For ten-and-six-pence sterling. | |
| |
