WAR SONG. The original strain, of which the following stanzas are an imitation, was wont to be sung, with patriotic enthusiasm, by the German and Prussian soldiers, in their encampments, on their marches, and in the field of battle, during the last campaigns of the allies against Bonaparte. This Tyrtean lyric, therefore, contributed, in its day and its degree, to the deliverance of Europe.

1.
Heaven speed the righteous sword,
And freedom be the word !
Come, brethren, hand in hand,
Fight for your father-land.

2.
Germania from afar
Invokes her sons to war;
Awake; put forth your powers,
And victory must be ours.

3.
On, to the combat, on!
Go where your sires have gone;
Their might unspent remains,
Their pulse is in your veins.

4.
On, to the combat, on!
Rest will be sweet anon;
The slave may yield, may fly ;
We conquer or we die.

5.
0, Liberty ! thy form
Shines through the battle-storm ;
Away with fear, away!
Let justice win the day!

J. MONTGOMERY.

The Early French Poets.

JAN DE LA PERUSE.

The works of Jan de la Peruse, poem is Medee, a tragedy. It is a one of those contemporary writers mixture of twelve syllable verses; the whom we shall see distinguished by common verse, ten; and lyrical, by Ronsard, were edited by Claude Bi- the chorus. The opening is from net, the affectionate friend of both. Seneca ; but he has not servilely folHe has prefixed a preface to them, lowed either that writer or Euripiand added some verses of his own. des. His odes, in the Pindaric style, The title of this book is, “ Les Oeu- are much worse than Romard's. The vres de Jan de la Peruse, avec quel- most striking thing I have observed ques autres diverses Poesies de in the collection is an ode that was Claude Binet." A Lyon. Par Be- written in his last illness, and which noist Rigaud, 1577. 16mo. The first death prevented him from finishing.

Quelque part que je me tourne,

Si pres des fleuves j'arrive
Tristesse avec moi sejourne;

Soudain l'eau, laissant la rive,
Tousiours mes tristes espris

En fuyant devant mon mal,
Sont d'une frayeur espris.

Se cache dans son canal.
Si je suis en la campagne

L'oiseau sur la seiche espine
J'oy une mortelle voix,

Sans dire mot est perché,
Le mesme son m'accompagne

Et le lieu ou je chemine
Si je suis dedans les bois.

Seiche comme il est touché.
En quelque lieu que je soye

Si quelque amy d'aventure,
Il n'y entre jamais joye.

Plein de pitié, s'aventure
Si je vois dans un hostel

De me venir conforter,
C'est un presage mortel.

Il sent ses sens transporter
Si des hommes je m'absente,

Par une tristesse extreme.
Cherchant les lieux esloignez,

Il sent un ennuy, un soin,
Par le hibou qui lamente

Et le pauvret a lui mesme
Mes malheurs sont temoignés.

De bon confort grand besoin.
Unto whatever part I turn,

Sorrow with me abides;
And, creeping o'er my spirit, still,

A secret terror glides.
A deadly sound is in mine ears,

If in the field I be ;
The self-same sound pursueth still,

When to the woods I flee.
Whatever house I enter in,

Mirth will no longer stay ;
A sad presage, whereso I come,

Makes all men haste away.
And if the people's haunts I shun,

Seeking a lonely place,
The owl shrieks vut in witness to

My lamentable case.
If to the river side I go,

And stand upon the brink;
Sudden the waters, fleeing me,

Within their channel shrink.
The bird upon the dry thorn sits,

And not a word saith he:
The very pathway, that I tread,

Dries up when touch'd by me.
If any friend perchance do come

In pity of my plight,
To comfort me; he straightway feels

Himself a wretched wight.
A carking care, a woe extreme,

Upon his heart do feed ;
And he himself thenceforth, poor man,

Of comfort much hath need.

This is natural and pathetic. Jan court the notice of the powerful. I de la Peruse, from the few poems he have learnt nothing more concerning has left, seems to have been an ami- him, than that he was born at Anable man, warmly attached to his goulême, and died there in 1555, in friends, and not very solicitous to the prime of his life.

The Twelve Tales of Lyddalcross.

TALE THE FIFTH.

THE MOTHER'S DREAM,

She slept—and there was vision’d to her eye
A stately mountain, green it seem'd, and high ;
She sought to climb it-lo ! a river dark
Roll'd at its foot-there came a gallant bark,
And in the bark were forms the eldest fiend
Had shaped to mock God's image ; fierce they lean'd
O’er the ship's side, and, seizing her, rush'd through
The river wave, which kindled as they flew.
Then to the bank came one and laugh'd aloud ;
Bright robes he wore, stern was his look and proud,
He stretch'd his arm, and hail'd her for his bride ;
The shuddering waters wash'd his robe aside,
And show'd a shape the fiend's tormenting flame
Had sorely vex'd—she shriek'd, and faintness caine.
Then shouts she heard, and sound of gladsome song,
And saw a stream of torches flash along.
The feast was spread, the bridal couch prepared,
Dread forms stood round, with naked swords to guard ;
Nor look'd she long ; one whisper'd in her ear,
Come, climb thy bed for lo! the bridegroom's near.
She cried to heaven—at once the wedding joy
Was changed to war shout and to funeral cry;
Swords in the air, as sunshine, flash'd and fell,
Then rose all crimson'd_loud came groan and yell,
And from the middle tumult started out
A form that seiz'd her_blow, and shriek, and shout
Came thick behind_down to the Solway flood
Fast was she borne, it seem'd a sea of blood;
She felt it touch her knees, and with a scream
She started back, and waken'd from her dream.

Legend of Ladye Beatrice. The Fifth Tale was related by a shuns the joy and the mirth of the lady. Her voice was slow and gen- world. When sorrow, which misses tle, and possessed that devotional few, had found me out, and made Scottish melody of expression which me a mateless bird, I once walked gives so much antique richness and out to the margin of that beautiful grace to speech. Under the shade sheet of water, the Ladye's Lowe. of a long veil she sought to conceal a It was the heart of summer; the hills face where early grief had bleached in which the lake lay embosomed the roses, and impressed a sedate were bright and green; sheep were and settled sorrow on a brow parti- scattered upon their sides; shepherds cularly white and high. But her sat on their summits; while the eye still retained something of the grassy sward, descending to the quiet light of early life, which darkened or pure water, gave it so much of its brightened as the joys, the sufferings, own vernal bue, that the eye could or the sorrows, of wedded and mater- not always distinguish where the land nal love, gave a deeper interest or and lake met. Its long green water passion to her story.

flags, and broad lilies, which lay so When woman is young, said she, flat and so white along the surface, with a sigh, but not of regret, she were unmoved, save by the course loves to walk in the crowded streets, of a pair of wild swans, which for and near the dwellings of men- many years had grazed on the grassy when she becomes wiser, has seen margin, or found food in the bottom the vanities, and drunk of the mi- of the lake. series and woes of life, she chooses This pastoral quietness pertained her walks in more lonely places, and, more to modern than to ancient times. seeking converse with her own spirit, When the summer heat was high,

a

nary belief.

men.

and the waters of the lake low, the on the summit, like a banner spread, remains of a broken but narrow cause- stands a lady clad in white, holding way, composed of square stones, in- her hands to heaven, and shrieking. dented in a frame-work of massy oak, This vision is said to precede, by a might still be traced, starting from night or two, the annual destruction a little bay on the northern side, and of some person by the waters of the diving directly towards the centre of lake. The influence of this superstithe lake. Tradition, in pursuing the tion has made the Ladye's Lowe a sohistory of this causeway, supplied litary and a desolate place, has prethe lake with an island, the island served its fish, which are both delia with a tower, and the tower with cious and numerous, from the fisher's narratives of perils, and bloodshed, net and hook, and its wild swans and chivalry, and love. These fire- from the gun of the fowler. The side traditions, varying according to peasantry seldom seek the solitude the fancy of the peasantry, all con- of its beautiful banks, and avoid cluded in a story too wild for ordi- bathing in its waters; and when the

A battle is invariably winter gives its bosom to the curler described by some grey-headed nar- or the skater, old men look grave rator, fought on the southern side of and say, · The Ladye's Lowe will the lake, and sufficiently perilous and have its yearly victim ;' and its yearbloody. A lady's voice is heard, ly victim, tradition tells us, it has and a lady's form is seen, among the ever had since the sinking of the armed men, in the middle of the tower. fight. She is described as borne off I had reached the margin of the towards the causeway by the lord of lake, and sat looking on its wide pure the tower, while the margin of the expanse of water. Here and there the water is strewed with dead or dying remains of an old tree, or a stunted

She sees her father, her bro- hawthorn, broke and beautified the ther, fall in her defence; her lover, to winding line of its border; while catwhom she had been betrothed, and tle, coming to drink and gaze at their from whom she had been torn, die by shadows, took away from the awe her side; and the deep and lasting and solitude of the place. As my, curse which she denounced against eye pursued the sinuous outline of her ravisher, and the tower, and the the lake, it was arrested by the aplake which gave him shelter, is not pearance of a form, which seemed forgotten, but it is too awful to that of a human being, stretched mingle with the stories of a grave motionless on the margin. I rose, and a devout people. That night, it and, on going nearer, I saw it was is said, a voice was heard as of a a man; the face cast upon the earth, spirit running round and round the and the hands spread. I thought lake, and pronouncing a curse against death had been there ; and while I it; the waters became agitated, and was waving my hand for a shepherd, a shriek was heard at midnight. In who sat on the hill-side, to approach the morning the castle of the Ladye's and assist me, I heard a groan, and Lowe was sunk, and the waters of the a low and melancholy cry, and prelake slept seven fathoms deep over sently he started up, and, seating the copestona.

himself on an old tree-root, rested a They who attach credence to this cheek on the palm of either hand, wild legend are willing to support it and gazed intently on the lake. He by much curious testimony. They was a young man ; the remains of tell that, when the waters are pure in health and beauty were still about summer time, or when the winter's him ; but his locks, once curling and ice lies clear beneath the foot of long, which maidens loved to look the curler, the wails of the tower at, were now matted, and wild, and are distinctly seen without a stone withered ; his cheeks were hollow displaced ; while those who connect and pale, and his eyes, once the tales of wonder with every remark- merriest and brightest in the district, able place, say, that once a year the shone now with a grey, wild, and castle arises at midnight from the unearthly light.

As I looked upon bosom of the lake, with lights, not this melancholy wreck of youth and like the lights of this world, stream- strength, the unhappy being put ing from loophole and turret, while both hands in the lake,' and lifting up water in his palms, scattered it during this singular employment, to in the air ; then dipping both hands chaunt some strange and broken again, showered the water about words with a wild tone and a faulhis locks like rain. He continued, tering tongue.

SONG OF BENJIE SPEDLANDS.

1.
Cursed be thou, O water, for my sake ;

Misery to them who dip their hands in thee!
May the wild fowl forsake thy margin,

The fish leap no more in thy waves;
May the whirlwind scatter thee utterly,

And the lightning scorch thee up;
May the lily bloom no more on thy bosom,
And the white swan fly from thy floods !

2.
Cursed be thou, O water, for my sake ;

The babe unborn shall never bless thee;
May the flocks that taste of thee perish;

May the man who bathes in thy flood
Be cross'd and cursed with unrequited love,

And go childless down to the grave.
As I curse thee with my delirious tongue,
I will mar thee with my unhappy hands!

3.
As this water, cast on the passing wind,

Shall return to thy bosom no more,
So shall the light of morning forsake thee,

And night-darkness devour thee up.
As that pebble descends into thy deeps,

And that feather floats on thy waves,
So shall the good and the holy curse thee,
And the madman mar thee with dust.

4.
Cursed may'st thou continue, for my sake,

For the sake of those thou hast slain;
For the father who mourn'd for his son,

For the mother who wail'd for her child.
I heard the voice of sorrow on thy banks,

And a mother mourning by thy waters;
I saw her stretch her white hands over thee,

And weep for her fair-hair'd son ! The sound of the song rolled low than her mourning dress, now came and melancholy over the surface of towards me, along the border of the lake. I never heard a sound the lake. She had the face and so dismal. During the third verse, the form of one whom I knew in the singer took up water in the hol- my youth, the companion of my low of his hand, and threw it on the teens, and the life and love of all wind. Then he threw a pebble and who had hearts worth a woman's a feather into the lake; and, gather- wish. She was the grace of the ing up the dust among the margin preaching, the joy of the dance, stones, strewed it over the surface of through her native valley, and had the water. When he concluded his the kindest and the gayest heart in wild verses, he uttered a loud cry, the wide holms of Annandale. I rode and, throwing himself suddenly on at her wedding, and a gay woman his face, spread out his hands, and was I; I danced at her wedding as lay, and quivered, and moaned like if sorrow was never to come ; and one in mortal agony.

when I went to the kirking, and saw A young woman, in widow's weeds, her so fair, and her husband so handand with a face still deeper in woe some, I said, in the simplicity of my