out Duke Rollo's Norman lance
To stay destruction's fell advance
Against the Castle walls:
Haro, Haro! a l'aide, ma Reine!
Thy duteous children not in vain
Plead for old Cornet yet again,
To spare it, ere it falls!

"What? shall Earl Rodolph's sturdy strength,
After six hundred years, at length
Be recklessly laid low?
His grey machicolated tower
Torn down within one outraged hour
By worse than Vandals' ruthless power?--
Haro! a l'aide, Haro!

"Nine years old Cornet for the throne
Against rebellion stood alone--
And honoured still shall stand,
For heroism so sublime,
A relic of the olden time,
Renowned in Guernsey prose and rhyme,
The glory of her land!

"Ay,--let your science scheme and plan
With better skill than so;
Touch not this dear old barbican,
Nor dare to lay it low!

"On Vazon's ill-protected bay
Build and blow up, as best ye may,
And do your worst to scare away
Some visionary foe,--
But, if in brute and blundering power
You tear down Rodolph's granite tower,
Defeat and scorn and shame that hour
Shall whelm you like an arrowy shower--
Haro! a l'aide, Haro!"

When my antiquarian cousin Ferdinand, the historian of "Sarnia" and our
"Family Records," saw these lines, he positively made serious
objection--while generally approving them--against my saying "six
hundred years," whereas, according to him, it was only five hundred and
ninety-three! he actually wanted me to alter it, or at all events insert
"almost,"--so difficult is it to reconcile literal accuracy with
poetical rhyme and rhythm. I seem to remember that he wrote to the local
papers about this. However, it is some consolation to know that these
heartfelt verses forced the War Office to spare Castle Cornet: the
Norman appeal by Haro being a privilege of Channel-Islanders to bring
their grievances direct to the Queen in council. As I have continually
the honour "Monstrari digito praetereuntium" in the _role_ of a
"Fidicen," I suppose that poetries in such a self-record as this are not
positive bores--they can always be skipped if they are--so I will even
give here a cheerful bit of rhyme which I jotted down at midnight on the
deck of a yacht in a half-gale off Cherbourg, when going with a
deputation from Guernsey to meet the French President in 1850:--

_A Night-Sail in the Race of Al