he friend there, will listen and pray
"God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay--"
CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
III
Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,
Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' array:
Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my fay,"
CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
IV
Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and gay,
Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay!
I've better counsellors; what counsel they?"
CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
Though not illustrative of the subject in hand, "Martin Relph" is
included here on account of the glimpse it gives of an episode,
interesting in English History, though devoid of serious consequences,
since it marked the final abortive struggle of a dying cause.
An imaginary incident of the rebellion in the time of George II., forms
the background of "Martin Relph," the point of the story being the
life-long agony of reproach suffered by Martin who let his envy and
jealousy conquer him at a crucial moment. The history of the attempt of
Charles Edward to get back the crown of England, supported by a few
thousand Highlanders, of his final defeat at the Battle of Culloden, and
of the decay henceforth of Jacobitism, needs no telling. The treatment
of spies as herein shown is a common-place of war-times, but that a
reprieve exonerating the accused should be prevented from reaching its
destination in time through the jealousy of the only person who saw it
coming gives the episode a tragic touch lifting it into an atmosphere of
peculiar individual pathos.
MARTIN RELPH
_My grandfather says he remembers he saw, when a youngster long ago,
On a bright May day, a strange old man, with a beard as white as snow,
Stand on the hill outside our town like a monument of woe,
And, striking his bare bald head the while, sob out the reason--so!_
If I last as long at Methuselah I shall never forgive myself:
But--God forgive me, that I pray, unhappy Martin Relph,
As coward, coward I call him--him, yes, him! Away from me!
Get you behind the man I am now, you man that I used to be!
What can have sewed my mouth up, set me a-stare, all eyes, no tongue?
People have urged "You visit a scare too hard on a lad so young!
You were taken aback, poor boy," they urge, "no time to regain
your wits:
Besides it had m
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