She stood, with amazement, Houseless by night.

The bleak wind of March
Made her tremble and shiver;
But not the dark arch,

Or the black flowing river:
Mad from life's history,
Glad to death's mystery,
Swift to be hurled-
Anywhere, anywhere
Out of the world.

In she plunged boldly,
No matter how coldly
The rough river ran,-
Over the brink of it,
Picture it-think of it,
Dissolute Man!
Lave in it, drink of it,
Then, if you can!

Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;

Fashioned so slenderly,

1800-1859

THE BATTLE OF IVRY1

(1842)

Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!

And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry

of Navarre!

Now let there be the merry sound of music and the dance;

Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, O pleasant land of France! And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters,

5

Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters.

As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy;

For cold and stiff and still are they who wrought

thy walls annoy.

Hurrah! hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war!

Hurrah! hurrah! for Ivry, and King Henry of

Young, and so fair!

Ere her limbs frigidly

cheon in his hand;

And, as we look'd on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood,

Smooth, and compose them;

And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood;

A village in France, where the battle was fought in 1590, between Henry of Navarre the Champion of Protestantism, and the forces of the Roman Catholic "League."

2 A fortified sea-port in France, a stronghold of the Protestants.

Appenzell is a double canton in Switzerland, half Protestant, half Roman Catholic. In this passage it is obvious that the Roman Catholics are meant.

Count Philip of Egmont, a foremost man in the Spanish army, who commanded a body of Flemish troops. 5 Henry of Lorraine, Duke of Guise, a spy, and agent of Philip II of Spain.

Duke of Mayenne, lieutenant-general for the League. 7 A commander's staff.

8 Gaspard of Coligni, the great commander of the Huguenots, was murdered by the Roman Catholics on St. Bartholomew's Eve. The remembrance of that massacre always aroused the opposite party to action.

Some murmur when their sky is clear,
And wholly bright to view,
If one small speck of dark appear

In their great heaven of blue.

James II issued a "Declaration of Indulgence," the object of which was to give the Roman Catholics greater power. He ordered it to be read in the churches. Many of the clergy refused to read this "declaration" and the King threatened to put them in the Tower. Among those who refused was Trelawney, Bishop of Bristol, a native of Cornwall.

2 A small, precipitous, and rocky island, crowned by a castle, off the coast of Cornwall.

Well, let it take them! What have we to do
With Kaikobád the Great, or Kaikhosrú?
Let Zál and Rustum thunder as they will, 15
Or Hatim call to Supper-heed not you.

Edward Fitzgerald, a man of wide and curious learning and fastidious taste, held a unique position among the poets of his time. His original productions were few, and comparatively unimportant; his reputation rests on his work as a translator, and it rests largely on his translation of a single poem. He translated six plays of the Spanish dramatist Calderon; he translated several poems from the Persian, and then, in 1859, he astounded and delighted innumerable readers by his rendering of the "quatrains " of Omar Khayyam. While Fitzgerald lived a most secluded life, he was the warm friend of Tennyson, Thackeray, Spedding, and other eminent men. Tennyson, in dedicating his Tiresias to "Old Fitz," as he calls his life-long friend, declared that he knew no translation in English done "more divinely well" than Fitzgerald's Omar.

A poem by Omar Khayyam (i. e. Omar, the Tentmaker) a Persian poet and astronomer of the 11th and 12th centuries. The title of his most fam: us poem refers simply to its poetic form. Rubaiyat is the technical name for a quatrain of a certain metrical character.

3 The birthplace of Omar, in the province of Khorasin, northern Persia.

4 Jamshyd, Kaikobád, and Kaikhosru, were early Persian kings in Firdusi's poem Shahnamah, or epic of kinge. Heroes in Firdusi's great epic. Zál is Rustum's father. The tragic error of Rustum, who unwittingly kills his sor Sohrab, is the theme of Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum. Hátim Tai, a type of oriental generosity.

THE END OF THE PLAY
(From Dr. Birch and His Young Friends,
1848-1849)

The play is done; the curtain drops,
Slow falling to the prompter's bell:

A moment yet the actor stops,

And looks around, to say farewell.

It is an irksome word and task

And, when he's laughed and said his say,
He shows, as he removes the mask,
A face that's anything but gay.

One word, ere yet the evening ends,
Let's close it with a parting rhyme,
And pledge a hand to all young friends,
As fits the merry Christmas time.
On life's wide scene you, too, have parts,
That Fate ere long shall bid you play;
Good night! with honest gentle hearts
A kindly greeting go alway!

Good night! I'd say, the griefs, the joys,
Just hinted in this mimic page,

The triumphs and defeats of boys,
Are but repeated in our age.

Your hopes more vain, than those of men;

At forty-five played o'er again.

5

10

15

20

25

I'd say, your woes were not less keen,

Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen

30

So each shall mourn, in life's advance,
Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed;
Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance,
And longing passion unfulfilled.
Amen! whatever fate be sent,

Pray God the heart may kindly glow,
Although the head with cares be bent,
And whitened with the winter's snow.

Come wealth or want, come good or ill,
Let young and old accept their part,
And bow before the Awful Will,

And bear it with an honest heart,
Who misses or who wins the prize.
Go, lose or conquer as you can;
But if you fail, or if you rise,

Be each, pray God, a gentleman.

A gentleman, or old, or young!
(Bear kindly with my humble lays);
The sacred chorus first was sung

Upon the first of Christmas days:
The shepherds heard it overhead-
The joyful angels raised it then:
Glory to God, on high, it said,

And peace on earth to gentle men.
My song, save this, is little worth;
I lay the weary pen aside,

And wish you health, and joy, and mirth,
As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.

As fits the holy Christmas birth,

Be this, good friends, our carol stillBe peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will.

William E. Aytoun

1813-1865

THE WIDOW OF GLENCOE1

I

Do not lift him from the bracken,
Leave him lying where he fell-
Better bier ye cannot fashion:

None beseems him half so well
As the bare and broken heather,
And the hard and trampled sod,
Whence his angry soul ascended
To the judgment-seat of God!
Winding sheet we cannot give him-
Seek no mantle for the dead,
Save the cold and spotless covering
Showered from heaven upon his head.
Leave his broadsword as we found it,
Bent and broken with the blow,
Which before he died, avenged him
On the foremost of the foe.
Leave the blood upon his bosom-
Wash not off that sacred stain;

1 The Clan of Macdonald, in the Highland valley of Glencoe, were late in taking the required oath of loyalty to King William III. Under royal warrant a regiment was sent to Glencoe and many of the Macdonalds were treacherously killed.