Chevy Chase

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1813 edition. Excerpt: ...corpses pouring warm Their faithful tears, the lifeless form From earth they rais'd, and parting slow. With waitings of funereal woe, The Cheviot's fatal wo6d they leave; Thick, as they past, the darkening eve Clos'd on their steps; abrupt and cold The night-gale rose; and faintly toll'd With many a pause, the vesper bell, That seem'd to ring a parting knell. Soft drop the dews of heaven on those, The fallen brave, and sweet repose Upon their heavy eyelids be, Who sleep beneath the green-wood tree! Sweet rest and deep to-night is theirs; To-morrow, soon as matin prayers Awake the morn, and convent song, Shall weeping widows hither throng; On boughs of birch and hazel gray Shall bear their lov'd remains away; Hang fresh-wove garlands on their biers, Wash their deep wounds with brinish tears, With long embrace their relics fold, And place in earth their sacred mould. There, when the shades of evening close, The hunter of the mountain roes On the low mound shall often sit, And while the night-jars round him flit, And the quick bat his prey pursues, On times of old shall fondly muse, And sigh the mouldering heaps to trace, That mark the scene of Chevy Chase! NOTES NOTES, CHEVY CHASE. P. 1. The ancient heroic ballad of Chevy Chase has long been an universal favourite. The union which it presents of the sports of the field with the more striking incidents of warfare, the personal nature of the quarrel which leads to the catastrophe, the celebrity of its principal characters, and the domestic scene of its transactions, all contribute to give it a degree of interest far superior to that excited by most productions of a similar kind. But independent of these considerations, a poem which has for so many centuries been the delight of the British...