:
Clusters of arms, the spoil of ancient wars;
Old scimitars of true Damascus brand,
Short swords with basket hilts to guard the hand,
And iron casques with rusty visor bars;
Lances, and spears, and battle axes keen,
With crescent edges, shields with studded thorns,
Yew bows, and shafts, and curved bugle horns,
With tasseled baldricks of the Lincoln green:
And on the walls with lifted curtains, see!
The portraits of my noble ancestry;
Thin featured, stately dames with powdered locks,
And courtly shepherdesses tending flocks;
Stiff lords in wigs, and ruffles white as snow,
Haught peers, and princes centuries ago,
And dark Sir Hugh, the bravest of the line,
With all the knightly scars he won in Palestine!

VI.

My gallery sleeps aloof,
Soft-lighted through the roof,
Enshrining pictures old,
And groups of statues cold,
The gems of Art, when Art was in her Age of Gold!
Not picked from any single age or clime,
Nor one peculiar master, school, or tone;
Select of all, the best of all alone,
The spoil and largesse of the Earth and Time;
Food for all thoughts and fancies, grave or gay;
Suggestive of old lore, and poets' themes;
These filled with shapes of waking life, and day,
And those with spirits and the world of dreams;
Let me draw back the curtains, one by one,
And give their muffled brightness to the sun:

THE PICTURES.

Helen and Paris on their bridal night,
Under the swinging cressets' starry light,
With Priam and his fifty sons around,
Feasting in all their majesty and bloom,

Filling their golden cups with eager hands,
To drink a health, while pale Cassandra stands
With all her raven tresses unbound,
Her soul o'ershadowed by the coming doom.

Andromache, with all her tearful charms,
Folded upon the mighty Hector's breast,
And the babe shrinking in its Nurse's arms,
Affrightened by the nodding of his crest.

The giant Cyclops, sitting in his cave,
Helped by the diving Ulysses, old and wise,
Spilling the wine in rivers down his beard,
Shaggy and grim,--his shoulder overleered
By swart Silenus, sly and cunning knave,
Who steals a puffy skin with twinkling eyes.

Anacreon, lolling in th