Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/220

 VANDYKE S PICTURE. 195

ter gracefully around its brim. It stands upon a pe destal, with a Latin inscription, and was originally purchased by Sir William Hamilton, and afterwards by the late Earl of Warwick.

Among the pictures in Warwick Castle is a grand one of Charles the First, by Vandyke. The king in armor is seated on a gray horse, so majestic, yet so melancholy, that you almost imagine him endued with a prophetic spirit, and in the midst of regal grandeur saddened by his future fate. Bernard de Foix, Duke of Espernon and Valette, holds his helmet as a page. Vandyke executed three splendid equestrian paintings of this monarch. The other two are at Hampton Court and Windsor Castle.

��Stout Guy of Warwick, may we pass unharmed Thy wicket-gate ? And wilt thou not come forth With thy gigantic mace to break our bones, Nor seethe us in thy caldron, whence of yore The blood-red pottage flowed ?

A glorious haunt

Thy race have had neath these luxuriant shades From age to age. Around the mighty base Of their time-honored castle, lifting high Rampart and tower and battlement sublime, Winds the soft-flowing Avon, pleased to clasp An infant islet in her nursing arms. Anon her meek mood changes, and in sport She leaps with frolic foot from rock to rock,

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