There were his young barbarians all at play;
There was their Dacian mother-he their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday:

All this rush'd with his blood.-Shall he expire,
And unavenged ?-Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!

LADY CLARE.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

[See page 126.]

Ir was the time when lilies blow,
And clouds are highest up in air,
Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe
To give to his cousin, Lady Clare.
I trow they did not part in scorn:
Lovers long-betrothed were they :
They two will wed the morrow morn;
God's blessing on the day!

"He does not love me for my birth,
Nor for my lands so broad and fair;
He loves me for my own true worth,
And that is well," said Lady Clare.

In there came old Alice, the nurse,

Said, "Who was this that went from thee ?"
"It was my cousin," said Lady Clare,
"To-morrow he weds with me."

"Oh! God be thanked!" said Alice, the nurse,
"That all comes round so just and fair:
Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands,
And you are not the Lady Clare."

"Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse ?"
Said Lady Clare, "that ye speak so wild ?”

"As God's above," said Alice, the nurse,

66

'I speak the truth: you are my child.

"The old Earl's daughter died at my breast-
I speak the truth as I live by bread!
I buried her like my own sweet child,
And put my child in her stead."

"Falsely, falsely have you done,

Oh! mother," she said, "if this be true,
To keep the best man under the sun
So many years from his due."

"Nay, now, my child," said Alice, the nurse, But keep the secret for your life,

66

And all you have will be Lord Ronald's,
When you are man and wife."

“If I'm a beggar born," she said,

"I will speak out, for I dare not lie; Pull off, pull off, the brooch of gold, And fling the diamond necklace by."

"Nay, now, my child," said Alice, the nurse, But keep the secret all ye can."

66

She said, "Not so: but I will know

If there be any faith in man."

"Nay, now, what faith ?" said Alice, the nurse,

66

The man will cleave unto his right."

"And he shall have it," the lady replied,

Though I should die to-night.”

"Yet give one kiss to your mother dear! Alas! my child, I sinned for thee."

"Oh! mother, mother, mother," she said,

She clad herself in a russet gown,
She was no longer Lady Clare:
She went by dale, and she went by down,
With a single rose in her hair.

The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought
Leapt up from where she lay,

Dropt her head in the maiden's hand,
And followed her all the way.

Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower:
"Oh! Lady Clare, you shame your worth!

Why come you drest like a village maid,
That are the flower of the earth ?"

"If I come drest like a village maid,
I am but as my fortunes are:

I am a beggar born," she said, "And not the Lady Clare."

"Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald, "For I am yours in word and deed. Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald, 66 Your riddle is hard to read."

Oh! and proudly stood she up!

Her heart within her did not fail!
She looked into Lord Ronald's eyes,

And told him all her nurse's tale.

He laughed a laugh of merry scorn;

He turned and kissed her where she stood: "If you are not the heiress born,

And I," said he, "the next in blood

"If you are not the heiress born,
And I," said he, "the lawful heir,
We two will wed to-morrow morn,
And
you shall still be Lady Clare."

(By permission of Messrs. Moxon & Co.)

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.
H. W. LONGfellow.

[See page 161.]

It was the schooner Hesperus

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughter To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,

Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow,

The smoke now west, now south.

Then up and spake an old sailor
Had sailed the Spanish Main-
I pray thee put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.

66

"Last night the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"

The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the north-east;
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused like a frightened steed,
Then leapt her cable's length.

"Come hither-come hither, my little daughter, And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her in his seaman's coat,
Against the stinging blast;

He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.

"Oh! father! I hear the church-bells ring-
Oh! say, what may it be?

""Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" And he steered for the open sea.

"Oh! father! I hear the sound of guns; Oh! say, what may it be ?”

"Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!"

"Oh! father! I see a gleaming light;
Oh! say, what may it be ?"`

But the father answered never a word—
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands, and prayed That saved she might be;

And she thought of Christ who stilled the wave
On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gust between
A sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows:
She drifted a dreary wreck;

And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool;

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the mast went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank-
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At day-break, on the black sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,

To see the form of a maiden fair
Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,

The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

In the midnight and the snow.

Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!

HORATIUS KEEPS THE BRIDGE.

LORD MACAULAY.

[See page 89.]

OUT spake the Consul roundly:

"The bridge must straight go down;

For, since Janiculum is lost,

Nought else can save the town."

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The captain of the gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods?

"And for the tender mother
Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
His baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens
Who feed the eternal flame,

To save them from false Sextus

That wrought the deed of shame ?