O` Victor Emmanuel the King. The sword be for thee, and the deed; And nought for the alien, next spring, rought for Hapsburg and Bourton agreed; But for us a great Italy freed, with a hero to head us;.. our our King Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Man wants but little here below: "For wants that little. Long Iis not with me exactly so: But 'tis so, in the song. My wants are many, and if toks Would muster many a fame: And were each wish a mint of gold I still should long for more John Quincy Adams. Washington 21. August 1846 POEMS OF ADVENTURE AND RURAL SPORTS. CHEVY-CHASE. ADVENTURE. [Percy, Earl of Northumberland, had vowed to hunt for three days in the Scottish border, without condescending to ask leave from Earl Douglas, who was either lord of the soil or lord warden of the Marches. This provoked the conflict which was celebrated in the old ballad of the "Hunting o' the Cheviot." The circumstances of the battle of Otterbourne (A. D 1388) are woven into the ballad, and the affairs of the two events are confounded. The bal lad preserved in the Percy Reliques is probably as old as 1574. The one following is a modernized form, of the time of James I.] GOD prosper long our noble king, Our lives and safeties all; A woful hunting once there did In Chevy-Chase befall. To drive the deer with hound and horn The child may rue that is unborn The stout Earl of Northumberland The chiefest harts in Chevy-Chase Who sent Earl Percy present word He would prevent his sport. The English earl, not fearing that, Did to the woods resort, With fifteen hundred bowmen bold, The gallant greyhounds swiftly ran His host he parted had in three, As leader ware and tried ; Throughout the English archery And throwing straight their bows away, They closed full fast on every side, In truth, it was a grief to see How each one chose his spear, At last these two stout earls did meet ; Then leaving life, Earl Percy took The dead man by the hand; "In truth, my very heart doth bleed A knight amongst the Scots there was Sir Hugh Mountgomery was he called, And past the English archers all, With such vehement force and might The staff ran through the other side So thus did both these nobles die, He had a bow bent in his hand, Made of a trusty tree; An arrow of a cloth-yard long To the hard head haled he. Against Sir Hugh Mountgomery The gray goose wing that was thereon This fight did last from break of day Till setting of the sun; For when they rung the evening-bell The battle scarce was done. With stout Earl Percy there were slain Sir Robert Ratcliff, and Sir John, And with Sir George and stout Sir James, |