But thou the while shalt bear

To after-times an old and honored name,
And to remote posterity declare

Thy founder's virtuous fame.

Fair structure, worthy the triumphant age
Of glorious England's opulence and power!
Peace be thy lasting heritage,

And happiness thy dower!

Robert Southey.

Lyme Regis.

AT LYME REGIS.

ALM, azure, marble sea,

CALM,

As a fair palace pavement largely spread,

Where the gray bastions of the eternal hills

Lean over languidly,

Bosomed with leafy trees, and garlanded!

Peace is on all I view;

Sunshine and peace; earth clear as heaven one hour; Save where the sailing cloud its dusky line

Ruffles along the blue,

Brushed by the soft wing of the silent shower.

In no profounder calm

Did the great Spirit over ocean brood,
Ere the first hill his yet unclouded crest
Reared, or the first fair palm

Doubled her maiden beauty in the flood.

*

*

*

*

Francis Turner Palgrave,

"T

Lynn.

THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM.

WAS in the prime of summer time,

An evening calm and cool,

And four-and-twenty happy boys

Came bounding out of school;

There were some that ran and some that leapt Like troutlets in a pool.

Away they sped with gamesome minds
And souls untouched by sin;

To a level mead they came, and there
They drave the wickets in:
Pleasantly shone the setting sun
Over the town of Lynn.

Like sportive deer they coursed about,

And shouted as they ran,

Turning to mirth all things of earth,

As only boyhood can;

But the usher sat remote from all,

A melancholy man!

His hat was off, his vest apart,

To catch heaven's blessed breeze;

For a burning thought was in his brow,
And his bosom ill at ease;

So he leaned his head on his hands, and read The book between his knees!

Leaf after leaf he turned it o'er,

Nor ever glanced aside;

For the peace of his soul he read that book

In the golden eventide;

Much study had made him very lean
And pale and leaden-eyed.

At last he shut the ponderous tome;
With a fast and fervent grasp
He strained the dusky covers close,
And fixed the brazen hasp:
"O God! could I so close my mind,
And clasp it with a clasp!"

Then leaping on his feet upright,
Some moody turns he took,

Now up the mead, then down the mead,

And past a shady nook,

And, lo! he saw a little boy

That pored upon a book!

"My gentle lad, what is 't you read, Romance or fairy fable?

Or is it some historic page,

Of kings and crowns unstable?"

Six hasty strides beyond the place,
Then slowly back again;

And down he sat beside the lad,
And talked with him of Cain;

And, long since then, of bloody men,
Whose deeds tradition saves;
And lonely folk cut off unseen,
And hid in sudden graves;
And horrid stabs, in groves forlorn,
And murders done in caves;

And how the sprites of injured men
Shriek upward from the sod;
Ay, how the ghostly hand will point
To show the burial clod;
And unknown facts of guilty acts
Are seen in dreams from God!

He told how murderers walk the earth
Beneath the curse of Cain,

With crimson clouds before their eyes,

And flames about their brain; For blood has left upon their souls Its everlasting stain!

"And well," quoth he, "I know, for truth,

Their pangs must be extreme,

Woe, woe, unutterable woe,

Who spill life's sacred stream!

For why? Methought, last night I wrought A murder, in a dream!

"One that had never done me wrong,

A feeble man and old;

I led him to a lonely field,

The moon shone clear and cold:

Now here, said I, this man shall die,
And I will have his gold!

"Two sudden blows with a ragged stick,
And one with a heavy stone,
One hurried gash with a hasty knife, -
And then the deed was done:
There was nothing lying at my feet
But lifeless flesh and bone!

"Nothing but lifeless flesh and bone,
That could not do me ill;
And yet I feared him all the more,
For lying there so still:

There was a manhood in his look
That murder could not kill!

And, lo! the universal air
Seemed lit with ghastly flame;
Ten thousand thousand dreadful eyes
Were looking down in blame;
I took the dead man by his hand,
And called upon his name!

"O God! it made me quake to see Such sense within the slain!

But when I touched the lifeless clay,