God that lives to judge the faithless judge between your kings and you!

Ye are come with vows of homage-holdthere listens One on high--

Life and limb and earthly worship, faith and truth to live or die."

We have heard such words aforetime, words by all but One forgot,

So they sware to us, the Exiles--oh, young king, believe them not!

Ha! 'tis brave to hear the traitors mouth the pledge of royal faith

"Thou whom God hath throned above me, I am thine for life or death."

In our old imperial vestures they their manmade king enfold,

Kneeling to their own creation, as they knelt to us of old.

Why, ye speak as though He heard not nay, ye shout as in His ear

"We uptore what Thou hadst planted, lo, our goodlier plant is here."

I must see your May-game ritual, see you give the crown and globe,

I must see your German masquing in my Sire's Dalmatic robe.

For ye keep our sacred symbols, Edward's staff and Edward's crown,

Ye that build a throne for strangers, hurled your native monarchs down.

Why, what needs this priestly unction ? have ye kings by grace of God,

Now the old and awful kingship 'neath the white steed's hoof is trod ?

Reverend lords in cope and rochet, clustering round St. Edward's chair,

Priests who wail for Charles the Martyr, where's your welcome for his heir? Noble lords, the power of knighthoodknightly faith's a hollow thing,

Ye who hail a fifth usurper in the presence of your king !

All you had, my lords, we gave you, save one heirloom all your own,

Heirloom meet for noble houses, lying lips, and hearts of stone.

Oh, we know your inborn baseness, how it runs in courtiers' blood,

Ere we made ye knights and nobles ye were false to man and God;

But your creed reformed constrained you, but your pure faith made you vile. There were others. Hark! a Stuart knows, methinks, that ducal style

One that bends before our altars lowlier stoops at Brunswick's shrine. Norfolk? Murray, I forgive thee! hell hath treasons worse than thine.

Thou that tak'st that shameless homage, with my diadem on thy brow,

Proudly count thy kneeling lieges, I am truer king than thou;

Faithful hearts are all my kingdom, changing not with darkening years,

Holier than thine oil of gladness is the anointing of their tears.

I have been among my subjects proved in winter as in spring,

And their tears fell on my fingers as they whispered--Charles, my king.

Saw I ne'er such strong devotion, since the princely-hearted dame

Journeyed far with household treasures, as to Mersey's bank I came ;

At my feet she laid her offerings, to my hands her white lips prest,

Strained her glassy eyes and murmured, Royal Edward, be thou blest !

I have heard the voice of Stuart, let me now in peace depart."

Worth a realm of England's nobles was that blind one's peerless heart,

But her name recalls my vision, like a sunburst o'er the deep.

Oh! I see the summer morning on the shores of Moidart sieep,

And the Standard on Glenfinnan, and thy kindling glance, Lochiel,

And Macdonald's sudden rapture as his clansmen bared the steel;

See the throng of lords and vassals round the gate of Holyrood,

Hark the burst of Scottish welcome when in Mary's halls I stood.

And our scattered foes at Preston, and the triumph at Carlisle,

And our bannered hose at Falkirk, bright with fortune's parting smile.

Ha! 'tis past, that glorious vision, there's a wailing in mine ears,

Lo the field of red Culloden glooming through the mist of years;

Oh, the faithful hearts that bore me scatheless to the Northern wave,

Oh, the more than friends and brothers sleeping now in felon's grave,

Traitor's doom and torturing scaffold--all they bore for Charles's sake.

Oh, it fires my brain to madness, tongue must hold or heart must break.

There are brave hearts yet in England, hearts as tender and as true,

As when erst my loyal Cumbrians for the right their broadswords drew;

Though they lurk in upper chambers,

though they boast no Norman blood, Still they hold their scorn of traitors, love of kings and fear of God.

Oh, my lords that wait on fortune, watching how the tide will turn,

Scorn them not, no peer has‍ taught them all God's lessons to unlearn ;

When they pledged them to Charles Edward they had counted honour's cost,

And they cleave to him that loves them, be the battle won or lost.

All's not smooth to crowned usurpers, will your Guelphs in trouble see.

Peers of this day's vows as mindful as my friends of theirs to me.

Then if these should fail you, prince, these in whom you put your trust,

Think when darkest clouds are gathering, God remembers the unjust;

Think He reckons then with England for the scaffold of Whitehall,

For the Stuart's wrongs and sorrows many a Guelphic tear must fall.

So God show the right between us-here our paths for ever part,

Know ye have not crushed your victim while he sways one English heart.

'Tis a realm ye well might envy, one our House has held of yore,

Fare you well and seek to win it,—Stuarts cross your path no more.

MRS. CRAIK (née DINAH

MULOCK). 1826-1887

FOUR YEARS

MARIA

At the Midsummer, when the hay was down,

Said I mournful-Though my life be in its

prime,

Bare lie my meadows all shorn before their time.