I have been forty years your officer,
And time it is I should surrender now
The ensigns of my office!" So he said,
And paying thus his rite of sepulture,

Threw o'er the slaughter'd chief his blazon'd coat.1

Then Conrade thus bespake him: "Englishman, Do for a dying soldier one kind act !

Seek for the Maid of Orleans, bid her haste
Hither, and thou shalt gain what recompence
It pleaseth thee to ask."

The herald soon

Meeting the mission'd Virgin, told his tale.
Trembling she hasten'd on, and when she knew
The death-pale face of Conrade, scarce could Joan
Lift up the expiring warrior's heavy hand,
And press it to her heart.

"I sent for thee,
My friend !" with interrupted voice he cried,
That I might comfort this my dying hour
With one good deed. A fair domain is mine,
Let Francis and his Isabel possess

That, mine inheritance." He paused awhile,
Struggling for utterance; then with breathless speed,
And pale as him he mourn'd for, Francis came,
And hung in silence o'er the blameless man,
Even with a brother's sorrow: he pursued,
"This Joan will be thy care. I have at home
An aged mother- Francis, do thou soothe
Her childless age. Nay, weep not for me thus:
Sweet to the wretched is the tomb's repose ! "

So saying, Conrade drew the javelin forth, And died without a groan.

By this the scouts,
Forerunning the king's march, upon the plain
Of Patay had arrived, of late so gay

With marshall'd thousands in their radiant arms,
And streamers glittering in the noon-tide sun,
And blazon'd shields and gay accoutrements,
The pageantry of war: but now defiled

With mingled dust and blood, and broken arms,
And mangled bodies. Soon the monarch joins
His victor army. Round the royal flag,
Uprear'd in conquest now, the chieftains flock
Proffering their eager service.
To his arms,

Or wisely fearful, or by speedy force
Compell'd, the embattled towns submit and own
Their rightful king. Baugenci strives in vain :
Yenville and Mehun yield; from Sully's wall
Hurl'd is the banner'd lion: on they pass,
Auxerre, and Troyes, and Chalons, ope their gates,
And by the mission'd Maiden's rumour'd deeds
Inspirited, the citizens of Rheims

Feel their own strength; against the English troops

! This fact is mentioned in Andrews's History of England. I have merely versified the original expressions. "The berald of Talbot sought out his body among the slain. *Alas. my lord, and is it you! I pray God pardon you all your misdoings. I have been your officer of arms forty years and more: it is time that I should surrender to you the ensigns of my office.' Thus saying, with the tears gushing from his eyes, he threw his coat of arms over the corpse, thus performing one of the ancient rites of sepulture."

* "The Frenchmen wonderfully reverence this oyle; and

When Rheims re-echoed to the busy hum
Of multitudes, for high solemnity

Assembled. To the holy fabric moves

The long procession, through the streets bestrewn
With flowers and laurel boughs. The courtier throng
Were there, and they in Orleans, who endured
The siege right bravely; Gaucour, and La Hire,
The gallant Xaintrailles, Boussac, and Chabannes,
Alenson, and the bravest of the brave,
The Bastard Orleans, now in hope elate,
Soon to release from hard captivity
His dear-beloved brother; gallant men,
And worthy of eternal memory,

For they, in the most perilous times of France,
Despair'd not of their country. By the king
The delegated Damsel pass'd along

Clad in her batter'd arms. She bore on high
Her hallow'd banner to the sacred pile,
And fix'd it on the altar, whilst her hand
Pour'd on the monarch's head the mystic oil,2
Wafted of yore by milk-white dove from heaven,
(So legends say) to Clovis when he stood

At Rheims for baptism; dubious since that day,
When Tolbiac plain reek'd with his warrior's blood,
And fierce upon their flight the Almanni prest,
And rear'd the shout of triumph; in that hour
Clovis invoked aloud the Christian God
And conquer'd: waked to wonder thus, the chief
Became love's convert, and Clotilda led
Her husband to the font.

The mission'd Maid
Then placed on Charles's brow the crown of France,
And back retiring, gazed upon the king
One moment, quickly scanning all the past,
Till in a tumult of wild wonderment
She wept aloud. The assembled multitude
In awful stillness witness'd: then at once,
As with a tempest-rushing noise of winds,
Lifted their mingled clamours. Now the Maid
Stood as prepared to speak, and waved her hand,
And instant silence followed.

"King of France !"

She cried, "At Chinon, when my gifted eye
Knew thee disguised, what inwardly the spirit
Prompted, I promised, with the sword of God,
To drive from Orleans far the English wolves,
And crown thee in the rescued walls of Rheims.
All is accomplish'd. I have here this day
Fulfill'd my mission, and anointed thee
King over this great nation. Of this charge,
Or well perform'd or carelessly, that God

at the coronation of their kings, fetch it from the church where it is kept, with great solemnity. For it is brought (saith Sleiden in his Commentaries) by the prior sitting on a white ambling palfrey, and attended by his monkes; the archbishop of the town (Rheims) and such bishops as are present, going to the church door to meet it, and leaving for it with the prior some gage, and the king, when it is by the archbishop brought to the altar, bowing himself before it with great reverence."- Peter Heylyn.

Far through the silence of the unbroken plain

The bittern's boom was heard; hoarse, heavy, deep,
It made accordant music to the scene.
Black clouds, driven fast before the stormy wind,
Swept shadowing: through their broken folds the

moon

Struggled at times with transitory ray,
And made the moving darkness visible.
And now arrived beside a fenny lake

She stands, amid whose stagnate waters, hoarse
The long reeds rustled to the gale of night.
A time-worn bark receives the Maid, impell'd
By powers unseen; then did the moon display
Where through the crazy vessel's yawning side
The muddy waters oozed. A Woman guides,
And spreads the sail before the wind, which moan'd
As melancholy mournful to her ear,
As ever by a dungeon'd wretch was heard
Howling at evening round his prison towers.
Wan was the pilot's countenance, her eyes
Hollow, and her sunk cheeks were furrow'd deep,
Channell'd by tears! a few grey locks hung down
Beneath her hood: and through the Maiden's veins
Chill crept the blood, when, as the night-breeze pass'd,
Lifting her tatter'd mantle, coil'd around
She saw a serpent gnawing at her heart.

The plumeless bats with short shrill note flit by, And the night-raven's scream came fitfully, Borne on the hollow blast. Eager the Maid Look'd to the shore, and now upon the bank Leapt, joyful to escape, yet trembling still In recollection.

There, a mouldering pile Stretch'd its wide ruins, o'er the plain below Casting a gloomy shade, save where the moon Shone through its fretted windows: the dark yew, Withering with age, branch'd there its naked roots, And there the melancholy cypress rear'd

Its head; the earth was heaved with many a mound, And here and there a half-demolish'd tomb.

And now, amid the ruin's darkest shade, The Virgin's eye beheld where pale blue flames Rose wavering, now just gleaming from the earth, And now in darkness drown'd. An aged man Sate near, seated on what in long-past days Had been some sculptured monument, now fallen And half-obscured by moss, and gather'd heaps Of wither'd yew-leaves and earth-mouldering bones. His eye was large and rayless, and fix'd full Upon the Maid; the tomb-fires on his face Shed a blue light; his face was of the hue Of death; his limbs were mantled in a shroud.

crossed by a bridge of iron, and from thence came to a mountain in which a great quantity of gold was concealed. When the king had concluded, the servant related what he had beheld, and they both went to examine the mountain, where upon digging they discovered an immense weight of gold.

I stumbled upon this tale in a book entitled SPHINX, Theologico-Philosophica. Authore Johanne Heidfeldio, Ecclesiaste Ebersbachiano. 1621.

The same story is in Matthew of Westminster; it is added that Guntrum applied the treasures thus found to pious uses. For the truth of the theory there is the evidence of a

Then with a deep heart-terrifying voice,
Exclaim'd the spectre, "Welcome to these realms,
These regions of Despair, O thou whose steps
Sorrow hath guided to my sad abodes!
Welcome to my drear empire, to this gloom
Eternal, to this everlasting night,
Where never morning darts the enlivening ray,
Where never shines the sun, but all is dark,
Dark as the bosom of their gloomy King."

So saying, he arose, and drawing on, Her to the abbey's inner ruin led,

Resisting not his guidance. Through the roof
Once fretted and emblazed, but broken now
In part, elsewhere all open to the sky,
The moon-beams enter'd, chequer'd here, and here
With unimpeded light. The ivy twined

Round the dismantled columns; imaged forms
Of saints and warlike chiefs, moss-canker'd now
And mutilate, lay strewn upon the ground,
With crumbled fragments, crucifixes fallen,
And rusted trophies. Meantime overhead
Roar'd the loud blast, and from the tower the owl
Scream'd as the tempest shook her secret nest.
He, silent, led her on, and often paused,
And pointed, that her eye might contemplate
At leisure the drear scene.

He dragg'd her on
Through a low iron door, down broken stairs;
Then a cold horror through the Maiden's frame
Crept, for she stood amid a vault, and saw,
By the sepulchral lamp's dim glaring light,
The fragments of the dead.

"Look here ! he cried,
"Damsel, look here! survey this house of death;
O soon to tenant it; soon to increase
These trophies of mortality, . . for hence
Is no return. Gaze here; behold this skull,
These eyeless sockets, and these unflesh'd jaws,
That with their ghastly grinning seem to mock
Thy perishable charms; for thus thy cheek
Must moulder. Child of grief! shrinks not thy soul,
Viewing these horrors? trembles not thy heart
At the dread thought that here its life's-blood soon
Shall stagnate, and the finely-fibred frame,
Now warm in life and feeling, mingle soon
With the cold clod? thing horrible to think, . .
Yet in thought only, for reality

Is none of suffering here; here all is peace;
No nerve will throb to anguish in the grave.
Dreadful it is to think of losing life,
But having lost, knowledge of loss is not,
Therefore no ill. Oh, wherefore then delay
To end all ills at once!"

monkish miracle. When Thurcillus was about to follow St. Julian and visit the world of souls, his guide said to him, "Let thy body rest in the bed, for thy spirit only is about to depart with me; and lest the body should appear dead, I will send into it a vital breath."

The body however by a strange sympathy was affected like the spirit; for when the foul and fetid smoke which arose from the tithes withheld on earth had nearly suffocated Thurcillus, and made him cough twice, those who were near his body said that it coughed twice about the same time.

Matthew Paris.

"Eloquent tempter cease!" the Maiden cried,
"What though affliction be my portion here,
Thinkest thou I do not feel high thoughts of joy,
Of heart-ennobling joy, when I look back
Upon a life of duty well perform'd,

Then lift mine eyes to Heaven, and there in faith
Know my reward? . . . I grant, were this life all,
Was there no morning to the tomb's long night,
If man did mingle with the senseless clod,
Himself as senseless, then wert thou indeed
A wise and friendly comforter!.. But, fiend,
There is a morning to the tomb's long night,
A dawn of glory, a reward in heaven,
He shall not gain who never merited.

If thou didst know the worth of one good deed
In life's last hour, thou would'st not bid me lose
The precious privilege, while life endures
To do my Father's will. A mighty task
Is mine, .. a glorious call. France looks to me
For her deliverance."

"Maiden, thou hast done
Thy mission here," the unbaffled fiend replied:
"The foes are fled from Orleans: thou, perchance
Exulting in the pride of victory,
Forgettest him who perish'd: yet albeit
Thy harden'd heart forget the gallant youth,
That hour allotted canst thou not escape,
That dreadful hour, when contumely and shame
Shall sojourn in thy dungeon. Wretched Maid!
Destined to drain the cup of bitterness,
Even to its dregs,.. England's inhuman chiefs
Shall scoff thy sorrows, blacken thy pure fame,
Wit-wanton it with lewd barbarity,

And force such burning blushes to the cheek
Of virgin modesty, that thou shalt wish
The earth might cover thee. In that last hour,
When thy bruis'd breast shall heave beneath the chains
That link thee to the stake, a spectacle
For the brute multitude, and thou shalt hear
Mockery more painful than the circling flames
Which then consume thee; wilt thou not in vain
Then wish my friendly aid? then wish thine ear
Had drank my words of comfort? that thy hand
Had grasp'd the dagger, and in death preserved
Insulted modesty?"

Her glowing cheek
Blush'd crimson; her wide eye on vacancy

These lines strongly resemble a passage in the Pharonnida of William Chamberlayne, a poet who has told an interesting story in uncouth rhymes, and mingled sublimity of thought and beauty of expression, with the quaintest conceits, and most awkward inversions.

"On a rock more high

Than Nature's common surface, she beholds The mansion house of Fate, which thus unfolds

Its sacred mysteries. A trine within

A quadrate placed, both these encompast in

A perfect circle was its form; but what

Its matter was, for us to wonder at,

Is undiscovered left. A tower there stands

At every angle, where Time's fatal hands

The impartial Parca dwell; i' the first she sees
Clotho the kindest of the Destinies,
From immaterial essences to cull

The seeds of life, and of them frame the wool

"Her next of objects was that glorious tower
Where that swift-fingered nymph that spares no hour
From mortals' service, draws the various threads
Of life in several lengths; to weary beds
Of age extending some, whilst others in
Their infancy are broke: some blackt in sin,
Others, the favorites of Heaven, from whence
Their origin, candid with innocence;
Some purpled in afflictions, others dyed

In sanguine pleasures: some in glittering pride
Spun to adorn the earth, whilst others wear
Rags of deformity, but knots of care
No thread was wholly free from. Next to this
Fair glorious tower, was placed that black abyss