70 AFTER BLENHEIM. AFTER BLENHEIM. It was a summer evening, And by him sported on the green She saw her brother Peterkin He came to ask what he had found Old Kaspar took it from the boy Who stood expectant by: And then the old man shook his head, "Tis some poor fellow's skull,” said he, "I find them in the garden, For there's many here about; The ploughshare turns them out. "Now tell us what 'twas all about," And what they fought each other for." "It was the English," Kaspar cried, "My father lived at Blenheim then, Yon little stream hard by; They burnt his dwelling to the ground, So with his wife and child he fled, "With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide, And many a childing mother then But things like that, you know, must be "They say it was a shocking sight After the field was won; For many thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun: But things like that, you know, must be After a famous victory. 72 OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT. "Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won, "Nay.. nay.. my little girl," quoth he, "And everybody praised the Duke "Why that I cannot tell," said he, Robert Southey. OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT. I MET a traveller from an antique land "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: P. B. Shelley. THE NILE. IT flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands. And the void weighs on us; and then we wake, Leigh Hunt 74 EGYPT. EGYPT. FANTASTIC sleep is busy with my eyes: Sultry and still—a realm of mysteries; A wide-browed Sphinx, half buried in the sand, With orbless sockets stares across the land, The wofullest thing beneath these brooding skies Where all is woful weird-lit vacancy. 'Tis neither midnight, twilight, nor moonrise. The nebulous clouds are downward slowly drawn, |