“Their answering clamours shook the ground,
    And Gormul’s mountain far around
    From all his rocks flung back the sound. 
    Pierced by the monarch, with struggling yell
    A bull at Odin’s altar fell;
    The priest in a bowl received the gore,
    And round the troop the chalice bore. 
    Eager, as he the wine-cup quaffed,
    Each chief caroused the sable draught,—­
        The pledge of martial faith;
    And not a word the stillness broke,
    As thus, in turn, each chieftain spoke,
        With slow and solemn breath: 

    8.

    “’When the fiery-mantled Sun
    Sees the glorious fight began,
    He shall see its stubborn course
    Burn with unabated force! 
    Swords shall clatter, javelins sing,
    Arrows whistle from the string,
    Not a step be turned to flight,
    Not a warrior wish for night,
    ’Till the burning star of day
    Quenches his declining ray
    In the darkness of the main,
    And throughout the purple plain,
    Heaped with slaughter, piled with death,
    Not a foeman draws his breath. 
    He who well performs his vow,
    Monarch Odin, shield him thou! 
    He who shrinks from hostile blow,
    Hela! scourge the wretch below
    In thy ninefold house of woe!’”

    9.

    “O’er hill and field the war-drum peal’d,
        High flamed the beacon-flame,
    And each noble peer, from far and near,
        To Haquin’s standard came. 
    I saw ten thousand lances gleam
    Beneath the winter’s swart sun-beam! 
    They hide old Gormul’s snow-capt height,
        They hide the craggy dell;
    And I hastened thro’ the waves of night,
        The tidings of war to tell.”

THE EXILE: 

A POEM.

—­Superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est.

’Twas night:  the stars denied one cheering ray,
And wrapp’d in clouds the lunar splendours lay. 
No lightest zephyr brush’d the silent floods,
Or swept the bosom of the lofty woods: 
Each human heart the general calm confess’d;
The childless sire had hush’d his cares to rest: 
And he, the victim of his country’s laws,
The base deserter of her awful cause,
Whose eyes no more in earthly sleep shall close, }
Yet sunk oppress’d, and drank in calm repose     }
A short, a deep oblivion of his woes.            }

      Diffusing verdure o’er a lonely glade,
    A fountain with eternal murmurs play’d: 
    Hard by, an ancient forest’s leafy brow
    Cast a brown horror o’er the stream below,
    On the green margin of the quiet flood,
    With looks of woe, a time-worn Exile stood: 
    On the dim wave he cast a gloomy look,
    Then thus in low and troubled accents spoke: