Or dream of greeting, peace, or truce,
With excommunicated Bruce!
Yet will I grant to end debate,
Thy sainted voice decide his fate."

The Abbot seemed with eye severe
The hardy chieftain's speech to hear;
Then on King Robert turned the
Monk,

But twice his courage came and sunk,

Confronted with the hero's look;
Twice fell his eye, his accents shook;
Like man by prodigy amazed,
Upon the King the Abbot gazed;
Then o'er his pallid features glance
Convulsions of ecstatic trance;
His breathing came more thick and
fast,

And from his pale blue eyes were

I feel within mine aged breast

A power that will not be repressed. It prompts my voice, it swells my veins,

It burns, it maddens, it constrains!-
De Bruce, thy sacrilegious blow
Hath at God's altar slain thy foe:
O'ermastered yet by high behest,
I bless thee, and thou shalt be
blessed!"

He spoke, and o'er the astonished throng

Was silence, awful, deep, and long.

Again that light has fired his eye,
Again his form swells bold and high,
The broken voice of age is gone,
'Tis

vigorous manhood's lofty

tone:

A hunted wanderer on the wild,
On foreign shores a man exiled,
Disowned, deserted, and distressed,-
I bless thee, and thou shalt be
blessed!

Blessed in the hall and in the field,
Under the mantle as the shield.
Avenger of thy country's shame,
Restorer of her injured fame,
Blessed in thy sceptre and thy
sword,

De Bruce, fair Scotland's rightful Lord,

Blessed in thy deeds and in thy fame, What lengthened honors wait thy name!

In distant ages, sire to son

Shall tell thy tale of freedom won,
And teach his infants, in the use
Of earliest speech, to falter Bruce.
Go, then, triumphant! sweep along
Thy course, the theme of many a
song!

The Power, whose dictates swell my breast,

Hath blessed thee, and thou shalt be blessed!"

SCOTT.

VISION OF BELSHAZZAR.

THE king was on his throne,

The satraps thronged the hall; A thousand bright lamps shone O'er that high festival. A thousand cups of gold,

In Judah deemed divine, Jehovah's vessels hold

The godless heathen's wine!

In that same hour and hall,
The fingers of a hand
Came forth against the wall,
And wrote as if on sand:
The fingers of a man;-

A solitary hand

Along the letters ran,

And traced them like a wand.

The monarch saw, and shook, And bade no more rejoice: All bloodless waxed his look, And tremulous his voice.