Note 14 — Chapter XX
Reading edition
The following are the opening stanzas of the piece—quite as obnoxious to criticism, I fear, as those selected by Walsh:—
"Have ye not seen, on winter's eve, When snow-rack dimm'd the welkin's face. Borne wave-like, by the fitful breeze. The snow-wreath shifting place? Silent and slow as drifting wreath. Ere day, the clans from Preston Hill Moved downward to the vale beneath:— Dark was the scene and still! In stormy autumn day, when sad The boding peasant frets forlorn, Have ye not seen the mountain stream Bear down the standing corn? At dawn, when Preston bog was cross'd, Like mountain stream that bursts its banks. Charged wild those Celtic hearts of fire. On Cope's devoted ranks. Have ye not seen, from lonesome waste, The smoke-tower rising tall and slow, O'erlooking, like a stately tree, The russet plain below? And have ye mark'd that pillar'd wreath, When sudden struck by northern blast, Amid the low and stunted heath, In broken volumes cast? At sunrise, as by northern blast The pillar'd smoke is roll'd away. Fled all that cloud of Saxon war. In headlong disarray." * * *