ADVERTISEMENT TO THE ODES.

THE connexion between the lyric and dramatic forms of poetical composition is sufficiently ancient and established to warrant me, I trust, in subjoining to an historical play three attempts, equally elaborate, in the less cultivated art of the historical ode. Written at least with the advantage of mature experience, I venture to express a hope that these odes may, in some degree, redeem the faults of poems put forth, a few years since, in the rashness of early youth. If I require an additional apology for associating them with the drama of "Richelieu," let me frankly acknowledge that I am not influenced by the belief, that, should their more obtrusive companion meet with any success, they are likely to obtain a larger circle of readers, and, therefore, a fairer judgment, than, in the present indisposition to poetry, an author whose reputation, such as it may be, lies in other departments of literature, could reasonably expect for a volume exclusively devoted to lyrical compositions: and, on the other hand, if impartial judges should pass an unfavourable verdict on the pretensions, I have, at least, put them forward in a more unassuming shape than that of a separate publication.

London, April, 1839.

ODE I.

THE

LAST DAYS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.

"Her delight is to sit in the dark, and sometimes, with shedding tears, to bewail Essex."-Contemporaneous Correspondence.

"She refused all consolation; few words she uttered, and they were all expressive of some hidden grief which she cared not to reveal. But sighs and groans were the chief vent which she gave to her despondency, and which, though they discovered her sorrows, were never able to ease or assuage them. Ten days and nights she lay upon the carpet leaning on cushions which her maids brought her," &c.-HUME.

I.

Rise from thy bloody grave,

Thou soft Medusa of the Fated Line,*
Whose evil beauty look'd to death the brave;
Discrowned queen, around whose passionate shame
Terror and grief the palest flowers entwine,

That ever veil'd the ruins of a name
With the sweet parasites of song divine!
Arise, sad ghost, arise,

And if revenge outlive the tomb,

Thou art avenged. Behold the doomer brought to doom! Lo, where thy mighty murderess lies,

The sleepless couch, the sunless room, And, quell'd the eagle eye and lion mien, The wo-worn shadow of the Titan queen!

II.

There, sorrow-stricken, to the ground,

Alike by night and day,

* Mary Stuart-"The soft Medusa" is an expression strikingly applied to her in her own day.

The heart's blood from the inward wound

Ebbs silently away.

And oft she turns from face to face

A sharp and eager gaze,

As if the memory sought to trace
The sign of some lost dwelling-place,
Beloved in happier days;

Ah, what the clew supplies

In the cold vigil of a hireling's eyes?

Ah, sad in childless age to weep alone,

And start and gaze, to find no sorrow save our own! Oh soul, thou speedest to thy rest away,

But not upon the pinions of the dove;

When death draws nigh, how miserable they

Who have outlived all love!

As on the solemn verge of night

Lingers a weary moon,

She wanes, the last of every glorious light

That bathed with splendour her majestic noon:
The stately stars that, clustering o'er the isle,
Lull'd into glittering rest the subject sea;
Gone the great masters of Italian wile,
False to the world beside, but true to thee!

Burleigh, the subtlest builder of thy fame,
The gliding craft of winding Walsinghame;
They who exalted yet before thee bowed;
And that more dazzling chivalry, the band
That made thy court a faëry land,

In which thou wert enshrined to reign alone,
The Gloriana of the diamond throne:

All gone, and left thee sad amid the cloud!

III.

To their great sires, to whom thy youth was known,
Who from thy smile, as laurels from the sun,
Drank the immortal greenness of renown,
Succeeds the cold lip-homage scantly won
From the new race whose hearts already bear
The wise-man's offerings to th' unworthy heir.

There, specious Bacon's* unimpassion'd brow,

* See the servile and heart-sickening correspondence maintained by Francis Bacon and Robert Cecil (the sons of Elizabeth's most faithful friends) with the Scottish court during the queen's last ill

ness.