Some Poems

Wheel the wild dance!
Brave sons of France,
For you our ring makes room;
Make space full wide
For martial pride,
For banner, spear, and plume.
Approach, draw near,
Proud cuirassier!
Room for the men of steel!
Through crest and plate
The broadsword’s weight
Both head and heart shall feel.

VI

Wheel the wild dance
While lightnings glance,
And thunders rattle loud,
And call the brave
To bloody grave,
To sleep without a shroud.

Sons of the spear!
You feel us near
In many a ghastly dream;
With fancy’s eye
Our forms you spy,
And hear our fatal scream.
With clearer sight
Ere falls the night,
Just when to weal or woe
Your disembodied souls take flight
On trembling wing – each startled sprite
Our choir of death shall know.

VII

Wheel the wild dance
While lightnings glance,
And thunders rattle loud,
And call the brave
To bloody grave,
To sleep without a shroud.

Burst, ye clouds, in tempest showers,
Redder rain shall soon be ours -
See the east grows wan -
Yield we place to sterner game,
Ere deadlier bolts and direr flame
Shall the welkin’s thunders shame,
Elemental rage is tame
To the wrath of man.

VIII

At morn, grey Allan’s mates with awe
Heard of the visioned sights he saw,
The legend heard him say;
But the Seer’s gifted eye was dim,
Deafened his ear, and stark his limb,
Ere closed that bloody day.
He sleeps far from his Highland heath,
But often of the Dance of Death
His comrades tell the tale
On picquet-post, when ebbs the night,
And waning watch-fires glow less bright,
And dawn is glimmering pale.

ROMANCE OF DUNOIS. FROM THE FRENCH. [1815.]

[The original of this little Romance makes part of a manuscript collection of French Songs, probably compiled by some young officer, which was found on the field of Waterloo, so much stained with clay and with blood as sufficiently to indicate what had been the fate of its late owner. The song is popular in France, and is rather a good specimen of the style of composition to which it belongs. The translation is strictly literal.]

It was Dunois, the young and brave, was bound for Palestine,
But first he made his orisons before Saint Mary’s shrine:
“And grant, immortal Queen of Heaven,” was still the Soldier’s prayer;
That I may prove the bravest knight, and love the fairest fair.”

His oath of honour on the shrine he graved it with his sword,
And followed to the Holy Land the banner of his Lord;
Where, faithful to his noble vow, his war-cry filled the air,
“Be honoured aye the bravest knight, beloved the fairest fair.”

They owed the conquest to his arm, and then his Liege-Lord said,
“The heart that has for honour beat by bliss must be repaid. -
My daughter Isabel and thou shall be a wedded pair,
For thou art bravest of the brave, she fairest of the fair.”

And then they bound the holy knot before Saint Mary’s shrine,
That makes a paradise on earth, if hearts and hands combine;
And every lord and lady bright that were in chapel there
Cried, “Honoured be the bravest knight, beloved the fairest fair!”

THE TROUBADOUR. FROM THE SAME COLLECTION. [1815.]

Glowing with love, on fire for fame
A Troubadour that hated sorrow
Beneath his lady’s window came,
And thus he sung his last good-morrow:
“My arm it is my country’s right,
My heart is in my true-love’s bower;