r the brave!

Their bravery take, and darkly hide
Deep in thy inmost hold!
Take all their mailed pomp and pride
To deck thy mansions cold!
Plunderer! thou hast but purified
Their memories from alloy:
Faults of the dead we scorn to chide--
Their virtues sing with joy.

Lord of our fathers' ashes! list
A carol of their mirth;
Nor shake thy nieve, chill moralist!
To check their sons' joy-birth:--

It is the season when our sires
Kept jocund holiday;
And, now, around our charier fires,
Old Yule shall have a lay:--
A prison-bard is once more free;
And, ere he yields his voice to thee,
His song a merry-song shall be!

* * * * *

Sir Wilfrid de Thorold[2] freely holds
What his stout sires held before--
Broad lands for plough, and fruitful folds,--
Though by gold he sets no store;
And he saith, from fen and woodland wolds,
From marish, heath, and moor,--
To feast in his hall,
Both free and thrall,
Shall come as they came of yore.

"Let the merry bells ring out!" saith he
To my lady of the Fosse;[3]
"We will keep the birth-eve joyfully
Of our Lord who bore the cross!"

"Let the merry bells ring loud!" he saith
To saint Leonard's shaven prior;[4]
"Bid thy losel monks that patter of faith
Shew works, and never tire."
Saith the lord of saint Leonard's: "The brotherhood
Will ring and never tire
For a beck or a nod of the Baron good;"--
Saith Sir Wilfrid: "They will--for hire!"

Then, turning to his daughter fair,
Who leaned on her father's carven chair,--
He said,--and smiled
On his peerless child,--
His jewel whose price no clerk could tell,
Though the clerk had told
Sea sands for gold;--
For her dear mother's sake he loved her well,--
But more for the balm her tenderness
Had poured on his widowed heart's distress;--
More, still more, for her own heart's grace
That so lovelily shone in her lovely face,
And drew all eyes its love to trace--
Left all tongues languageless!--

He said,--and smiled
On his peerless child,
"Sweet bird! bid Hugh our seneschal
Send to saint Leonard's, ere even-fall,
A fat fed beeve, and a two-shear sheep,
With a firkin of ale that a monk in his sleep
May hear to hum, when it feels the broach,
And wake up and swig, without reproach!--