30 Poor Mary! though most beauteous in thy face, Ere sorrow touched it, beamed each lovely grace; Yet, oh! thy living features never wore A look so sweet, so eloquent before, As this, which bids all human passions cease, And tells my pitying heart you died in peace! HYMN TO WODEN.
God of the battle, hear our prayer! By the lifted falchion's glare; By the uncouth fane sublime, Marked with many a Runic rhyme; By the "weird sisters"[65] dread, That, posting through the battle red, Choose the slain, and with them go To Valhalla's halls below, Where the phantom-chiefs prolong Their echoing feast, a giant throng, 10 And their dreadful beverage drain From the skulls of warriors slain: God of the battle, hear our prayer; And may we thy banquet share! Save us, god, from slow disease; From pains that the brave spirit freeze; From the burning fever's rage; From wailings of unhonoured age, Drawing painful his last breath; Give us in the battle death! 20 Let us lift our glittering shield, And perish, perish in the field! Now o'er Cumri's hills of snow To death, or victory, we go; Hark! the chiefs their cars prepare; See! they bind their yellow hair; Frenzy flashes from their eye, They fly--our foes before them fly! Woden, in thy empire drear, Thou the groans of death dost hear, 30 And welcome to thy dusky hall Those that for their country fall! Hail, all hail the godlike train, That with thee the goblet drain; Or with many a huge compeer, Lift, as erst, the shadowy spear! Whilst Hela's inmost caverns dread Echo to their giant tread, And ten thousand thousand shields Flash lightning o'er the glimmering fields! 40 Hark! the battle-shouts begin-- Louder sounds the glorious din: Louder than the ice's roar, Bursting on the thawing shore; Or crashing pines that strew the plain, When the whirlwinds hurl the main! Riding through the death-field red, And singling fast the destined dead, See the fatal sisters fly! Now my throbbing breast beats high-- 50 Now I urge my panting steed, Where the foemen thickest bleed.
Soon exulting I shall go, Woden, to thy halls below; Or o'er the victims, as they die, Chaunt the song of Victory! [65] Valkyriae, or choosers of the slain.

See Gray's "Fatal Sisters," _et cet._ COOMBE-ELLEN.[66] Call the strange spirit that abides unseen In wilds, and wastes, and shaggy solitudes, And bid his dim hand lead thee through these scenes That burst immense around! By mountains, glens, And solitary cataracts that dash Through dark ravines; and trees, whose wreathed roots O'erhang the torrent's channelled course; and streams, That far below, along the narrow vale, Upon their rocky way wind musical.
Stranger! if Nature charm thee, if thou lovest 10 To trace her awful steps, in glade or glen, Or under covert of the rocking wood, That sways its murmuring and mossy boughs Above thy head; now, when the wind at times Stirs its deep silence round thee, and the shower Falls on the sighing foliage, hail her here In these her haunts; and, rapt in musings high, Think that thou holdest converse with some Power Invisible and strange; such as of yore Greece, in the shades of piney Maenalaus, 20 The abode of Pan, or Ida's hoary caves, Worshipped; and our old Druids, 'mid the gloom Of rocks and woods like these, with muttered spell Invoked, and the loud ring of choral harps.
Hast thou oft mourned the chidings of the world, The sound of her disquiet, that ascends For ever, mocking the high throne of GOD! Hast thou in youth known sorrow! Hast thou drooped, Heart-stricken, over youth's and beauty's grave, And ever after thought on the sad sound 30 The cold earth made, which, cast into the vault, Consigned thy heart's best treasure--dust to dust! Here, lapped into a sweet forgetfulness, Hang o'er the wreathed waterfall, and think Thou art alone in this dark world and wide! Here Melancholy, on the pale crags laid, Might muse herself to sleep; or Fancy come, Witching the mind with tender cozenage, And shaping things that are not; here all day Might Meditation listen to the lapse 40 Of the white waters, flashing through the cleft, And, gazing on the many shadowing trees, Mingle a pensive moral as she gazed.
High o'er thy head, amidst the shivered slate, Behold, a sapling yet, the wild ash bend, Its dark red berries clustering, as it wished In the clear liquid mirror, ere it fell, To trace its beauties; o'er the prone cascade, Airy, and light, and elegant, the birch Displays its glossy stem, amidst the gloom 50 Of alders and jagged fern, and evermore Waves her light pensile foliage, as she wooed The passing gale to whisper flatteries.
Upon the adverse bank, withered, and stripped Of all its pleasant leaves, a scathed oak Hangs desolate, once sovereign of the scene, Perhaps, proud of its beauty and its strength, And branching its broad arms along the glen: Oh, speaks it no remonstrance to the heart! It seems to say: So shall the spoiler come, 60 The season that shall shatter your fair leaves, Gay children of the summer! yet enjoy Your pleasant prime, and lift your green heads high, Exulting; but the storm will come at last, That shall lay low your strength, and give your pride To the swift-hurrying stream of age, like mine.
And so severe Experience oft reproves The gay and careless children of the world; They hear the cold rebuke, and then again Turn to their sport, as likes them, and dance on! 70 And let them dance; so all their blooming prime They give not up to vanity, but learn That wisdom and that virtue which shall best Avail them, when the evil days draw nigh, And the brief blossoms of their spring-time fade.
Now wind we up the glen, and hear below The dashing torrent, in deep woods concealed, And now again white-flashing on the view, O'er the huge craggy fragments.

Ancient stream, That murmurest through the mountain solitudes, 80 The time has been when no eye marked thy course, Save His who made the world! Fancy might dream She saw thee thus bound on from age to age Unseen of man, whilst awful Nature sat On the rent rocks, and said: These haunts be mine.
Now Taste has marked thy features; here and there Touching with tender hand, but injuring not, Thy beauties; whilst along thy woody verge Ascends the winding pathway, and the eye Catches at intervals thy varied falls.

90 But loftier scenes invite us; pass the hill, And through the woody hanging, at whose feet The tinkling Ellen winds, pursue thy way.
Yon bleak and weather-whitened rock, immense, Upshoots amidst the scene, craggy and steep, And like some high-embattled citadel, That awes the low plain shadowing.

Half-way up The purple heath is seen, but bare its brow, And deep-intrenched, and all beneath it spread With massy fragments riven from its top.