LXI.

 How subtly Nature mingles in the heart
 The past, the future, in this lovely time!
 How home and heaven together on us start!
 England! 'tis now thy autumn-sky sublime
 Reminds us of the parted spirit's clime,
 The hamlet clock strikes solemn as a knell;
 The sinking breeze that wafts the distant chime,
 The heavy harvest-team's returning bell,
The gleaner's homeward call, seem life's sad, sweet farewell.

LXII.

 But thousands, tens of thousands in thy fields
 Are counting every shade that dims this hour,
 With frequent sunward look till day-light yields,
 And each can turn him to the humble bower,
 Where his own hand has planted every flower;
 Time out of mind his father's quiet home;
 Where waits him one, whose virtue was her dower,
 Cheering her infants, as the deepening gloom,
Shed from the poplars, tells, he sure and soon will come.

LXIII.

 He comes; the moon has lit him home at last,
 And he has thrown his harvest hook away,
 And kiss'd the nut-brown babes that round him haste,
 Each with the little wonder of its day.
 The lowly meal is spread, the moon-beams play
 Through panes that bushy rose and wall-flower veil,
 And soon to make them music, on her spray,
 Her wonted, neighbour spray, the nightingale
Pours on the holy hour her thrilling, endless tale.

LXIV.

 The breeze has fall'n—but sudden symphonies
 Swell from beyond the gate and statued wall;
 As if they echoed from the breathless skies,
 The wavings of the night's o'ershadowing pall.
 I am no weeper, but their rise and fall
 Disturbs me,—Is the soul a harp whose strings
 Vibrate tumultuous tones at music's call?
 A fount, that when her touch unseals its springs
Gushes through all its old, enchanted wanderings?

LXV.

 There is a flash of steel through yonder trees,
 A wave of standards and a toss of plumes
 O'er scarlet ranks, like foam-bursts upon seas
 Ruddy with lightnings.—Hark! those well-known drums
 Rolling along the shadowy camp, as comes
 The night breeze rolling, then with distant wing
 Sunk in wild music.—Now along the glooms
 Echoes the silver trumpet, cymbals ring,
'Tis England's martial hymn!—there swells, “God save the King.”

LXVI.

 “God save the King”—a thousand shapes of war,
 Of valour, freedom, glorious suffering,
 In sudden vision crowd the marble air,
 Raised at the sound. Yet fearful memories fling
 Their darkness on the spirit.—Here a king
 Laid down his sacred head and died!—Oh, crime,
 What torrents of black carnage were to spring?
 What havoc of the rebel nation's prime?
Before her soul repaid that monarch's death sublime?

LXVII.

 Paris! there was no sleep beneath thy roofs
 The morn that saw that deed. The dim streets rung,
 Long before day, with cannon, trampling hoofs,
 And, fearfullest of all, the Tocsin's tongue.
 Startling the eye, the passing torches flung
 Their flash through many a chamber from beneath,
 Then vanish'd with the thick and hurrying throng;
 While the heart-sinking listener held his breath,
Catching in every sound the distant roar of death.

LXVIII.

 But earlier than that dim and early hour
 A lonely taper twinkled through the gloom;
 'Twas from the casement of the Temple tower;
 'Twas from a king's, a martyr's, dungeon-room!
 There he subdued his spirit for its doom;
 And one old priest, and one pale follower,
 Knelt weeping, as beside their master's tomb.
 Rude was the altar, but the heart was there,
And peace and solemn hope were in that prison prayer.

LXIX.

 But trumpets peal'd, and torches glared below;
 And from the tower rose woman's loud lament
 And infant cries; and shadows seem'd to go
 With tossing arms, and heads in anguish bent,
 Backwards and forwards hurrying, then, as spent,
 Sink down, and all be silent for a time;
 Until the royal victims' souls were rent
 With some new yell of cruelty and crime,
Or thunder'd through the dusk the Tocsin's deadly chime.

LXX.

 The morning came in clouds; the winter's blast
 Swept down in stormy gusts, then sank away
 In ominous moanings, chilling, as it past,
 The thousands posted in their stern array.
 There was no opening door, no sound of day,
 No song, no cry along the pale Boulevard;
 And, save some ghastly banner's distant play,
 Some clang, when in the gust the lances jarr'd,
All stretch'd before the eye one endless charnel yard.