Ah! little thought I to deplore
Those limbs in fetters bound;
Or hear, upon the scaffold floor,
The midnight hammer sound.

Ye cruel, cruel, that combined
The guiltless to pursue;
My Gilderoy was ever kind,
He could not injure you!

A long adieu! but where shall fly
Thy widow all forlorn,
When every mean and cruel eye
Regards my woe with scorn?

Yes! they will mock thy widow's tears,
And hate thine orphan boy;
Alas! his infant beauty wears
The form of Gilderoy.

Then will I seek the dreary mound
That wraps thy mouldering clay,
And weep and linger on the ground,
And sigh my heart away.

STANZAS

ON THE THREATENED INVASION.

1803.

OUR bosoms we'll bare for the glorious strife,
And our oath is recorded on high,

To prevail in the cause that is dearer than life,

Or crushed in its ruins to die!

Then rise, fellow freemen, and stretch the right hand, And swear to prevail in your dear native land!

"Tis the home we hold sacred is laid to our trust-
God bless the green Isle of the brave!
Should a conqueror tread on our forefathers' dust,

It would rouse the old dead from their grave! Then rise, fellow freemen, and stretch the right hand, And swear to prevail in your dear native land!

In a Briton's sweet home shall a spoiler abide,
Profaning its loves and its charms?

Shall a Frenchman insult the loved fair at our side?
To arms! oh, my Country, to arms!

Then rise, fellow freemen, and stretch the right hand, And swear to prevail in your dear native land!

Shall a tyrant enslave us, my countrymen !-No!
His head to the sword shall be given-

A death-bed repentance be taught the proud foe,
And his blood be an offering to Heaven!

Then rise, fellow freemen, and stretch the right hand,
And swear to prevail in your dear native land!

While other knights held revels, he
Was wrapt in thoughts of gloom,
And in Vienna's hostelrie

Slow paced his lonely room.

There entered one whose face he knew,

Whose voice, he was aware,

He oft at mass had listened to,

In the holy house of prayer.

"Twas the Abbot of St. James's monks,
A fresh and fair old man :

His reverend air arrested even
The gloomy Ritter Bann.

But seeing with him an ancient dame.
Come clad in Scotch attire,

The Ritter's colour went and came,
And loud he spoke in ire.

"Ha! nurse of her that was my bane,
Name not her name to me;
I wish it blotted from my brain:
Art poor?-take alms, and flee.".

"Sir Knight," the abbot interposed, "This case your ear demands ;" And the crone cried, with a cross enclosed In both her trembling hands:

"Remember, each his sentence waits;
And he that shall rebut

Sweet Mercy's suit, on him the gates
Of Mercy shall be shut.

You wedded undispensed by Church
Your cousin Jane in Spring;-
In Autumn, when you went to search
For churchmen's pardoning,

Her house denounced your marriage-band,
Betrothed her to De Grey,

And the ring you put upon her hand
Was wrenched by force away.

Then wept your Jane upon my neck;

Crying, Help me, nurse, to flee

To my Howel Bann's Glamorgan hills;'
But word arrived-ah me!-

You were not there; and 'twas their threat,

By foul means or by fair,
To-morrow morning was to set

The seal on her despair.

I had a son, a sea-boy, in
A ship at Hartland Bay;
By his aid from her cruel kin
I bore my bird away.

To Scotland from the Devon's
Green myrtle shores we fled;
And the Hand that sent the ravens
To Elijah, gave us bread.

She wrote you by my son, but he
From England sent us word
You had gone into some far countrie,
In grief and gloom he heard.

For they that wronged you, to elude
Your wrath, defamed my child;
And you-ay, blush, Sir, as you should—
Believed, and were beguiled.

To die but at your feet, she vowed

To roam the world; and we

Would both have sped and begged our bread,

But so it might not be.

For when the snow-storm beat our roof,

She bore a boy, Sir Bann,

Who grew as fair your likeness proof