Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/586

But away his cloak he flung,
 "Marguerite," cried he,—
'Twas her lover! whom she thought
 Sailing on the sea.

ANACREONTIC.

Nay, frown not fairest, chide no more.
 Nor blame the blushing wine;
Its fiery kiss is innocent,
 When thrills the pulse with thine.
So leave the goblet in my hand, guard,
 But vail thy glances bright,
Lest wine and beauty mingling
 Should wreck my soul to-night.

Then, Ida, to the ancient rim
 In sculptured beauty rare.
Bow down thy red-arched lip and quaff
 The wine that conquers care ;
Or breathe upon the shining cup
 Till that its perfume be
Sweet as the scent of orange groves,
 Upon some tropic sea.

And while thy fingers idly stray,
 In dalliance o'er the lyre.
Sing to me, love, some rare old song
 That gushed from heart of fire—
Song, such as Grecian phalanx hymned,
 When freedom's field was won.
And Persia's glory with the light
 Faded at Marathon.

Sing till the shouts of armed men
 Ring bravely out once more;
Sing till again the ghost-white tents
 Shine on the moonlit shore;
Bid from their melancholy graves
 The buried hopes to start,
I knew ere many a storm had swept
 The dew-drops from my heart.

Sing the deep memories of the past.
 My soul shall follow thee,
Its boundless depths re-echoing
 Thy glorious minstrelsy;
And as the wild vibrations hang
 Enfettered on the air.
I'll drink, thy white arms round me, love,
 The wine that conquers care.

JACQUELINE.^[1]

Almond-eyed Jacqueline beckoned to me,
 As our troop rode home from mounting
And I saw Gil Perez's brow grow dark,
 While his face seemed longer, by half a yard.
What care I for the Spaniard's ire.
His haughty lip and glance of fire;
What so fit for these Southern lords
As the tempered edges of freemen's swords?

Say, shall an Alva's merciless bands
 Their hands in our noblest blood imbrue,
And then with accursed foreign wiles
 Our gentle Northern girls pursue?
Hail to him who for freedom strikes!
Up with your banners and down with the dykes!
Better be whelmed 'neath ocean waves,
Than live like cowards the lives of slaves.

Haughty Gil Perez may then beware.
 For we love our blue-eyed Leyden girls,
And would welcome the shock of Toledo blades
 Were the prize but a lock of their golden curls.
Hope, on brothers, the day shall come
With flaunting of banner and rolling of drum,
When "William the Silent" shall rally his men,
And scourge these wolves to their homes again.

1. A ballad of the "Low Countries."' A. D. 1567.