High their holy anthem sounds,
Cestria's vale the hymn rebounds,

Floating down the sylvan Dee,
Q miserere Domine!

On the long procession goes,
Glory round their crosses glows,
And the Virgin-mother mild

In their peaceful banner smiled;
Who could think such saintly band
Doom'd to feel unhallow'd hand?

Such was the divine decree,

Q miserere Domine!

Bands that masses only sung,
Hands that censers only swung,
Met the northern bow and bill,

Heard the war-cry wild and shrill :

Woe to Brockmael's feeble hand,

Woe to Ofrid's bloody brand,

Woe to Saxon cruelty,

O miserere Domine!

Weltering amid warriors slain, Spurn'd by steeds with bloody mane, Slaughter'd down by heathen blade, Bangor's peaceful monks are laid: Word of parting rest unspoke,

Mass unsung, and bread unbroke;

For their souls for charity,

Sing O miserere Domine!

Bangor! o'er the murder wail,

Long the ruins told the tale,

Shatter'd towers and broken arch,

Long recall'd the woeful march : *
On thy shrine no tapers burn,

Never shall thy priests return;

The pilgrim sighs and sings for thee,
O miserere Domine!

* WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY says, that in his time the extent of the ruins of the monastery bore ample witness to the desolation occasioned by the massacre ;-" tot semiruti parietes ecclesiarum, tot anfractus porticum, tanta turba ruderum quantum vix alibi cernas."

FAREWELL TO THE MUSE.

ENCHANTRESS, farewell, who so oft has decoy'd me,
At the close of the evening through woodlands to roam,
Where the forester, lated, with wonder espied me

Explore the wild scenes he was quitting for home. Farewell, and take with thee thy numbers wild speaking, The language alternate of rapture and woe:

Oh! none but some lover, whose heart-strings are breaking, The pang that I feel at our parting can know.

Each joy thou couldst double, and when there came sorrow, Or pale disappointment to darken my way,

What voice was like thine, that could sing of to-morrow, Till forgot in the strain was the grief of to-day!

But when friends drop around us in life's weary waning, The grief, queen of numbers, thou canst not assuage; Nor the gradual estrangement of those yet remaining, The languor of pain, and the chillness of age.

Twas thou that once taught me in accents bewailing,
To sing how a warrior lay stretch'd on the plain,
And a maiden hung o'er him with aid unavailing,
And held to his lips the cold goblet in vain;
As vain those enchantments, O queen of wild numbers,
To a bard when the reign of his fancy is o'er,
And the quick pulse of feeling in apathy slumbers-

Farewell then-Enchantress !-I meet thee no more.