Little Ellie with her smile

Not yet ended, rose up gaily,

Tied the bonnet, donned the shoe, And went homeward round a mile, Just to see, as she did daily,

What more eggs were with the two.

Pushing through the elm-tree copse, Winding up the stream light-hearted, Where the osier pathway leads, Past the bough she stoops-and stops. Lo, the wild swan had deserted, And a rat had gnawed the reeds!

Ellie went home sad and slow. If she found the lover ever,

With his red-roan steed of steeds Sooth I know not; but I know She could never show him-never That swan's nest among the reeds! ELIZABETH Barrett BROWNING.

THE BROOK

When you read Tennyson's long poem-The Princess -you will be asked to praise three famous lines in it:

Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawns,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmur of innumerable bees.

Beautiful as they are, these lines are something like mimicry of the things they describe. The Brook does

not mimic, it gives the running of the water exquisitely, without trick.

I COME from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel

With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

S.P.

I

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

LORD TENNYSON.

ECHO SONG

Here is the splendour of sunshine on the white walls of old castles that seem locked into the very stone of the mountains, and the greater splendour of the sunshine on the greater white of the snows above.

THE splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow for ever and for ever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. LORD TENNYSON.

MORTE D'ARTHUR

Here you have our first example of blank-versepoetry in metre but without rhyme. It tells, in very noble English of the present day, the old Middle-Age story of the good and brave Arthur, King of the Britons. He hoped to make his kingdom pure, brave, and holy, but his knights failed him; he was wounded to death in his last battle with the heathen, and he waited for the magical powers that were to receive him at his death. Does not Tennyson give us the frost, the moonlight, the lake, and the ocean?

So all day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord,
King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
Sir Bedivere the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel by the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.
On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: