ANNA BOLEYN.

��On seeing the axe with which Anna Boleyn was beheaded, still preserved in the Tower of London.

��STERN minister of fate severe, Who, drunk with beauty's blood, Defying time, dost linger here, And frown with ruffian visage drear, Like beacon on destruction's flood, Say ! when ambition's giddy dream First lured thy victim's heart aside, Why, like a serpent, didst thou hide, 'Mid clustering flowers, and robes of pride,

Thy warning gleam ?

Hadst thou but once arisen in vision dread, From glory's fearful cliff her startled step had fled.

Ah ! little she reck'd, when St. Edward's crown So heavily press'd her tresses fair, That, with sleepless wrath, its thorns of care Would rankle within her couch of down ! To the tyrant's bower, In her beauty's power,

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