Albert,--advocating it both in
prose and verse, and being instrumental in getting royal permission to
take a duplicate of the great work now at South Kensington. My cousin
the Bailiff, the late Sir Stafford Carey, dated his knighthood from the
inauguration of the statue, now one of the chief ornaments of St.
Peter's Port,--the other being the Victoria Tower, also a Sarnian
exploit.

Isle of Man.

Under such a title as this, "My Life as an Author," that author being
chiefly known for his poetry, though he has also written plenty of
prose, it is (as I have indeed just said) not to be reasonably objected
that the volume is spotted with small poems. Still, I must do it, if I
wish to illustrate by verse, or other extracts from my writings
(published or unprinted), certain places where the said author has had
his temporary _habitat_: now one of these is the Isle of Man,--where I
and mine made a long summer stay at Castle Mona. The chief literary
productions of mine in that modern Trinacria, whose heraldic emblem,
like that of ancient Sicily, is the Three legs of Three promontories,
are some antiquarian pieces, principally one on the sepulchral mound of
Orry the Dane:--

"In fifty keels and five
Rushed over the pirate swarm,
Hornets out of the northern hive,
Hawks on the wings of the storm;
Blood upon talons and beak,
Blood from their helms to their heels,
Blood on the hand and blood on the cheek,--
In five and fifty keels!

"O fierce and terrible horde
That shout about Orry the Dane,
Clanging the shield and clashing the sword
To the roar of the storm-tost main!
And hard on the shore they drive
Ploughing through shingle and sand,--
And high and dry those fifty and five
Are haul'd in line upon land.

"And ho! for the torch straightway,
In honour of Odin and Thor,--
And the blazing night is as bright as the day
As a gift to the gods of war;
For down to the melting sand
And over each flaring mast
Those fifty and five they have burnt as they stand
To the tune of the surf and the blast!

"A ruthless, desperate crowd,
They trample the shingle at Lhane,
And hungry for slaughter they clamour aloud
For the Viking, for Orry the Dane!
And swift has he flown at the foe--
For the clustering clans are here,--
But light is the club and weak is the bow
To the Nors