The Classic and the Beautiful from the Literature of Three Thousand Years

THE SOLDIER'S TEAR.

UPON

And all with attention would eagerly mark

"PON the hill he turned to take the last When he cheered up the pack: "Hark to fond look Rockwood! Hark! hark!"

Of the valley and the village church and the And all with attention would eagerly mark

cottage by the brook;

He listened to the sound so familiar to his ear, And the soldier leaned upon his sword and wiped away a tear.

When he cheered up the pack: "Hark to
Rockwood! Hark! hark!

High! wind him and cross him!
Now, Rattler boy, hark, hark!"

dressed

Beside that cottage-porch a girl was on her Six crafty earth-stoppers in hunter's green knees; She held aloft a snowy scarf which fluttered Supported poor Tom to an earth made for in the breeze; rest;

She breathed a prayer for him—a prayer he His horse-which he styled his Old Soulcould not hear; next appeared,

But he paused to bless her as she knelt, and On whose forehead the brush of his last fox wiped away a tear.

OU all knew Tom Moody, the whipperin, well :

The bell just done tolling was honest Tom's
knell.

A more able sportsman ne'er followed a hound
Through a country well known to him fifty

miles round;

was reared;

Whip, cap, boots and spurs in a trophy were

bound,

And here and there followed an old straggling hound.

Ah! no more at his voice yonder vales will they trace,

Nor the wrekin resound his first burst in the chase

With "High over now! Press him! Tallyho, tally-ho, tally-ho!"

Thus Tom spoke his friends ere he gave up his breath:

"Since I see you're resolved to be in at the
death,

One favor bestow-'tis the last I will crave:
Give a rattling 'View hallo!' thrice over my

grave,

And unless at that warning I lift up my head, No hound ever opened with Tom near the My boys, you may fairly conclude I am dead. wood

But he'd challenge the tone and could tell if

'twas good,

Honest Tom was obeyed, and the shout rent

the sky,

For every voice joined in the "tally-ho!" cry.

Honest Tom was obeyed, and the shout rent | I owned but sunlight: that they took.

THE OLD VAGRANT.

ANON.

FROM THE FRENCH OF PIERRE-JEAN DE BERANGER. ELL, in this ditch I reach at last, Old, weak and tired, my closing day; Folks say I'm drunk, then hurry past:

Good! there's no pity thrown away. Yet some across their shoulders glance; Others a mite or two have thrown. Nay, hasten on! you'll miss the dance:

Old vagrant, I can die alone.

Yes, here, of age, they'll say I die ;
For hunger never kills, of course.
How often for the workhouse I

Have sighed, as for a last resource!
But filled each hospital I found,

So poor the people now are grown. Ne'er nurse had I but the cold ground: Old vagrant, there I'll die alone.

In youth the artisans I prayed

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THE

enemy,

I die alone.

Translation of WILLIAM ANDERSON.

ADELGITHA.

HE ordeal's fatal trumpet sounded, And sad pale Adelgitha came, When forth a valiant champion bounded, And slew the slanderer of her fame.

She wept, delivered from her danger;

But when he knelt to claim her glove, "Seek not," she cried, "O gallant stranger, For hapless Adelgitha's love. "For he is in a foreign far land

Whose arm should now have set me free; And I must wear the willow garland

For him that's dead, or false to me.'

"Nay! say not that his faith is tainted!"
He raised his vizor. At the sight
She fell into his arms and fainted:
It was indeed her own true knight!

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

WILLIE BAIRD.

'S two and thirty summers
since I came

of Inverburn.

you

dead, my

doo,

Yonder above you? Are
Or did you see the shining Hand that parts

To school the village lads The clouds above and becks the bonnie birds
Until they wing away, and human eyes
That watch them till they vanish in the blue
Droop and grow tearful? Ay, I ken, I ken,
I'm talking folly, but I loved the child:
He was the bravest scholar in the school;
He came to teach the very dominie
Me, with my lyart locks and sleepy heart.

My father was a shepherd
old and poor,
Who dwelling 'mong the
clouds on
norland
hills,

His tartan plaidie on, and
by his side
His sheep-dog running, reddened with the

Oh, well I mind the day his mother brought
Her tiny trembling tot with yellow hair-
Her tiny poor-clad tot six summers old-
And left him seated lonely on a form
Before my desk. He neither wept nor
gloomed,

But waited silently with shoeless feet
Swinging above the floor, in wonder eyed
The
maps upon the walls, the big black board,
The slates and books and copies, and my own
Gray hose and clumpy boots, last, fixing gaze
Upon a monster spider's web that filled
One corner of the whitewashed ceiling,

watched

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The small black bell that stands behind the | Which beat the mathematics.

door

Quærere Verum in sylvis Academi, sir, And ring the shouting laddies from their Is meet for men who can afford to dwell play: For ever in a garden, reading books Run, Willie !" And he ran and eyed the Of morals and the logic. Good and well! Give me such tiny truths as only bloom

bell, Stooped o'er it, seemed afraid that it would Like red-tipt gowans at the hallanstone, Or kindle softly, flashing bright at times, In fuffing cottage fires.

bite,

Then grasped it firm, and as it jingled gave A timid cry; next laughed to hear the sound,

The laddie still

Was seated on my knee when at the door We heard a scrape-scrape-scraping. Willie pricked

His ears and listened, then he clapt his hands:

"Hey! Donald, Donald, Donald !" (See! the rogue

Looks up and blinks his eyes: he knows his name.)

"Hey, Donald, Donald !" Willie cried. At that

I saw beneath me, at the door, a dog-
The very collie dozing at your feet,
His nose between his paws, his eyes half
closed.

At sight of Willie, with a joyful bark
He leapt and gambolled, eying me the while
In queer suspicion; and the mannock
peeped

Into my face while patting Donald's back: Donald. He has come to take me home."

First he was timid, next grew bashful, next
He warmed and told me stories of his home-"It's
His father, mother, sisters, brothers, all,

And how, when strong and big, he meant to
buy

A gig to drive his father to the kirk,
And how he longed to be a dominie—
Such simple prattle as I plainly see
You smile at; but to little children God
Has given wisdom and mysterious power

An old man's tale-a tale for men gray

haired

Who wear through second childhood to the

grave:

I'll hasten on. Thenceforward Willie came Daily to school, and daily to the door

Came Donald trotting, and they homeward | I cannot frame in speech the thoughts that

went

Together, Willie walking slow but sure And Donald trotting sagely by his side. (Ay, Donald, he is dead. Be still, old man!)

What link existed, human or divine,
Between the tiny tot six summers old
And yonder life of mine upon the hills
Among the mists and storms? 'Tis strange,
'tis strange!

But when I looked on Willie's face, it seemed
That I had known it in some beauteous life
That I had left behind me in the North.
This fancy grew and grew, till oft I sat,
The buzzing school around me, and would

seem

To be among the mists, the tracks of rain,
Nearing the hueless silence of the snow.
Slowly and surely I began to feel
That I was all alone in all the world,
And that my mother and my father slept
Far, far away in some forgotten kirk
Remembered but in dreams. Alone at nights
I read my Bible more and Euclid less;
For, mind you, like my betters, I had been
Half scoffer, half believer; on the whole,
I thought the life beyond a useless dream.

That soothed the throbbings of this weary heart;

But when I placed my hand on Willie's head,

Warm sunshine tingled from the yellow hair Through trembling fingers to my blood within ;

And when I looked in Willie's stainless eyes,
I saw the empty ether floating gray
O'er shadowy mountains murmuring low
with winds;

And often when, in his old-fashioned way,
He questioned me, I seemed to hear a voice
From far away that mingled with the cries
Haunting the regions where the round red

sun

Is all alone with God among the snow.

Who made the stars? and if within his hand. He caught and held one, would his fingers burn?

If I, the gray-haired dominie, was dug
From out a cabbage-garden such as he
Was found in; if, when bigger, he would

wear

Best left alone, and shut my eyes to themes Gray homespun hose and clumsy boots like

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The Classic and the Beautiful from the Literature of Three Thousand Years, 第 4 巻