The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 487, April 30, 1831. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ the warring bands he left;—

      Bade on Joppa’s sandy shore

      Seamen hoist the swelling sail;

      Swift the bark to Europe bore

      O’er the tide the fav’ring gale.

      When the pilgrim, sorrow laden,

      Sought the gates he lov’d so well;

      From the portals of his maiden

      Words of thunder3 rang his knell:

      “She ye seek has ta’en the veil,

      To God alone her thoughts are given;

      Yestere’en the cloisters pale

      Saw the bride betroth’d to heaven.”

      From the castle of his sires,

      Mad with grief, the hero flew;

      War no more his bosom fires,

      Arms he spurns, and courser true.

      Far from Toggenburg alone

      Wends he on his secret way,

      To friend and foe alike unknown,

      Clad in peasant’s mean array.

      On a mountain’s lonesome glade,

      ’Neath a hut he sought repose—

      Near where ’mid the lime-tree’s shade,

      The convent pinnacles arose;

      There, from morning’s dawn first bright’ning

      Till the ev’ning stars began,

      Secret hopes his anguish light’ning,

      Sate the solitary man.

      On the cloister fixed his eye,

      Thro’ the hours’ weary round,

      To his maiden’s lattice nigh,

      Till he heard that lattice sound—

      Till that dearest form was seen—

      Till she on her lover smil’d—

      And the turret-grates between

      Look’d devout and angel-mild.*

      There he sate thro’ many a day,

      Thro’ many a year’s revolving round—

      Alike to hope and grief a prey,

      Till he heard the lattice sound.

      Years were fleeting; when one morning

      Saw a corse the cloister nigh—

      To the long-watch’d turret turning

      Still its cold and glassy eye.

H.

      CORFE CASTLE—EDWARD II

(To the Editor.)

      I should be glad to be informed by your correspondent, James Silvester, Sen., on what authority he grounds his assertion (contained in No. 484.) that it was in the fortress of Corfe Castle that the unfortunate Edward II. was so inhumanly murdered. I have always, considered it an undisputed fact that the scene of this atrocity was at Berkeley Castle, in Gloucestershire. Hume states, that while in the custody of Lord Berkeley, the murderers, Mautravers and Gournay, “taking advantage of Berkeley’s sickness, in whose custody he then was, came to Berkeley Castle, threw him on a bed,” &c. &c. giving the particulars of the cruel deed. An abridged history, the only other authority I have at hand to refer to, says, “After these transactions, he was treated with the greatest indignities, and at last inhumanly murdered in Berkeley Castle, and his body buried in a private manner in the Abbey Church, at Gloucester.” The lines of Gray, in his celebrated poem of “The Bard,” are familiar to most school-boys, where he alludes to the cries of the suffering monarch

      “Through Berkeley’s roofs that ring Shrieks of an agonized king!”

      Yet as your correspondent, J.S. seems of the intelligent kind, he may be in possession of some authority to which he can refer, and thereby prove it is not merely an assertion inadvertently given, to increase the interest of his Visit to Corfe Castle. Knowing your wish that the pages of your entertaining Mirror should reflect the truth, the insertion of this will oblige your Constant Reader,

W.

      LINES WRITTEN IN A CHURCHYARD

(For the Mirror.)

      Why am I here?—Thou hast not need of me,

      Home of the rotting and the rotten dead—

      For thou art cumber’d to satiety,

      And wilt be cumber’d—ay, when I am fled!

      Why stand I here, the living among tombs?

      Answer, all ye who own a grassy bed,

      Answer your dooms.

      Thou, massy stone! over whose heart art thou?

      The lord who govern’d yonder giant place,

      And ruled a thousand vassals at his bow.

      Alack! how narrow and how small a space

      Of what was human vanity and show

      Serves for the maggot, when ’tis his to chase

      The greatest and the latest of his race.

      One of Earth’s dear ones, of a noble birth,

      Slumbers e’en here; of such supernal charms,

      That but to smile was to awaken mirth,

      And for that smile set loving fools in arms.

      The grave ill balances such living worth,

      For here the worm his richest pasture farms,

      Unconscious of his harms.

      Yon grassy sod, that scarcely seems a grave,

      Deck’d with the daisy, and each lowly flower,

      Time leaves no stone, recording of the knave,

      Whether of humble, or of lordly power:

      Fame says he was a bard—Fame did not save

      His name beyond the living of his hour—

      A luckless dower.

      ’Tis strange to see how equally we die,

      Though equal honour be unknown to light,

      The lord, the lady of distinction high,

      And he, the bard, who sang their noble might,

      Sink into death alike and peacefully;

      Though some may want the marble’s honour’d site,

      Yet earth holds all that earthliness did slight.

P.T.

      ANCIENT BOROUGH OF WENDOVER

(For the Mirror.)

      This borough sent members to parliament in the 28th of Edward I. and again in the 1st and 2nd of Edward II.; after which the privilege was discontinued for above three hundred years. “The intermission, (says Britton,) was attended by the very remarkable circumstance of all recollection of the right of the borough having been lost, till about the period of the 21st of James I. when Mr. Hakeville, of Lincoln’s Inn, discovered by a search among the ancient parliament writs in the Tower, that the boroughs of Amersham, Wendover, and Great Marlow, had all sent members in former times, and petitions were then preferred in the names of those places, that their ancient liberty or franchise might be restored. When the King5 was СКАЧАТЬ