Cease, then, my friend! a moment cease, And leave these classic tomes in peace! Of Roman and of Grecian lore, Sure mortal brain can hold no more. These ancients, as Noll Bluff might say, ‘Were pretty fellows in their day;’ But time and tide o’er all prevail- On Christmas eve a Christmas tale- Of wonder and of war-‘Profane! What! leave the lofty Latian strain, Her stately prose, her verse’s charms, To hear the clash of rusty arms: In Fairy Land or Limbo lost, To jostle conjurer and ghost, Goblin and witch!’-Nay, Heber dear, Before you touch my charter, hear; Though Leyden aids, alas! no more, My cause with many-languaged lore, This may I say:-in realms of death Ulysses meets Alcides’ wraith; Aeneas, upon Thracia’s shore, The ghost of murder’d Polydore; For omens, we in Livy cross, At every turn, locutus Bos. As grave and duly speaks that ox, As if he told the price of stocks; Or held, in Rome republican, The place of Common-councilman. All nations have their omens drear, Their legends wild of woe and fear. To Cambria look-the peasant see, Bethink him of Glendowerdy, And shun ‘the Spirit’s Blasted Tree.’ The Highlander, whose red claymore The battle turn’d on Maida’s shore, Will, on a Friday morn, look pale, If ask’d to tell a fairy tale: He fears the vengeful Elfin King, Who leaves that day his grassy ring: Invisible to human ken, He walks among the sons of men. Did’st e’er, dear Heber, pass along Beneath the towers of Franchemont, Which, like an eagle’s nest in air, Hang o’er the stream and hamlet fair? Deep in their vaults, the peasants say, A mighty treasure buried lay, Amass’d through rapine and through wrong By the last Lord of Franchemont. The iron chest is bolted hard, A Huntsman sits, its constant guard; Around his neck his horn is hung, His hanger in his belt is slung; Before his feet his blood-hounds lie: An ‘twere not for his gloomy eye, Whose withering glance no heart can brook, As true a huntsman doth he look, As bugle e’er in brake did sound, Or ever hollow’d to a hound. To chase the fiend, and win the prize, In that same dungeon ever tries An aged Necromantic Priest; It is an hundred years at least, Since ‘twixt them first the strife begun,
