ORIGIN OF NEW LANGUAGES.

ROM the bright paths of Time-beloved Aurore,

FRO

Changeful as hers, a Sybil's voice proceeds;

And poets hear it, where the lizard feeds,

On some old hill-top ruin, proud and hoar.

They hear, and ask not where she hath been before,
New rising with the trumpet-summoned steeds;
But each her sweet prophetic utterance heeds,
And to himself repeats it, o'er and o'er.

Bird of the morning, rhythmical wild lark,
That to thy song dost beat thine airy wings,
And lookest then in silence to the sun;

Whose deep ordainèd music thou dost mark,
High in the heavens, of thine own the springs;
So was on earth another speech begun.

CHAUCER.

HEN I remember how nor separate chance,

W or restless traffic peopling many a shore,

Nor old tradition with innumerous lore,

But poets wrought our best inheritance;
Sweet words and noble; in their gai science
That England heard, and then for evermore
Loved as her own, and did with deeds adore;
I bless thee with a kindred heart, Provence :

For to thy tales, like waves that come and go,
Sat Chaucer listening with exulting ear;

And casting his own phrase in giant mould:
That still had charms for sorrow's gentlest tear,
Telling the story of Griselda's woe,
"Under the roots of Vesulus the cold." 1

ROMÈO.

OUR daughters like the lilies, each a queen,
This

In his Toulouse had Raimond Berengare;

But he who set them in the regions fair,

That loved them, was a man of cheerful mien,
Who on a little mule at eve was seen,
Coming from Compostella: when the air
Breathed evil on long years of prosperous care,
Onward he went arrayed as he had been.
And in the towers of Provence bright and blue,
Through Langue d'Oc, and the city-girded shore,
Where was Romèo, none thereafter knew.
With his old pilgrim's staff his way he bore;

Seen only of the Tuscan,2 when he too,

From the world's bitter wrong to heaven could soar.

1 Vesulus is Monte Viso; Virgil calls it pinifer

"Canum morsu de montibus altis

Actus aper multos Vesulus quem pinifer annos
Defendit."

En. x. 707.

2 Romèo, whom Dante commemorates in his Vision of Paradise, was

WINTER.

To and the great vault of sh

O the short days, and the great vault of shade,

The whitener of the hills, we come-alas,

There is no colour in the faded grass,

Save the thick frost on its hoar stems arrayed.
Cold is it, as a melancholy maid

The latest of the seasons now doth pass,
With a dead garland, in her icy glass
Setting its spikes about her crispèd braid.
The streams shall breathe, along the orchards laid,
In the soft spring-time; and the frozen mass
Melt from the snow-drift; flowerets where it was
Shoot up the cuckoo shall delight the glade;
But to new glooms through some obscure crevasse 1
She will have past-that melancholy maid.

an unknown pilgrim from St. Jago of Compostella: he was received in the house of Raimond Berenger, and served for many years as his steward; being at last unjustly accused of fraud, he stated all he had done, and went as he came at first. His advice to the Count of Toulouse, through which he married his four daughters to kings, is mentioned in a letter of Machiavelli to Guicciardini :-"Io vi ricordò quel consiglio che dette quel Romeo al duca di Provenza, che aveva quattro figliuole femmine, e lo confortò a maritare la prima onorevolmente, dicendoli che quella darebbe regola ed ordine all' altre, tanto che lui la maritò al re di Francia, e dettegli mezza la Provenza per dote. Questo fece che maritò con poca dote le altre a tre re, onde Dante dice :

:

"Quattro figlie ebbe, e ciascuna regina,
Della qual cosa al tutto fu cagione
Romeo, persona umile e peregrina.'”

1 "It 'gan out crepe at some crevasse."

Chaucer's "House of Fame."

H H

CONTENTS OF A SPANISH CHRONICLE.

L

EST the great deeds of many a passing year
Should down to dusty dull oblivion go,

The noble monk Don Roderic doth show
All things, as in a mirror deep and clear.
How went ambassador the valorous peer,
That was his grandsire, to the Moorish foe;
And heard the voice of Guadalquiver's flow,
By moonlight, when Giralda's shade was near.
Praise to the saints; by those unchristian daughters
Ne'er was he snared, but came true knight away;
And reared over Lleren his gentle towers.
His name was as a shade o'er many waters,
Cast ever as he stood in glory's ray;

And lengthening as came on the evening hours.

DE

TO A FRIEND.

EAR Pollington,' from those far eastern climes,
Over whose border I was hovering,

Once, as an eagle, whose uncertain wing

Turns backward from the Danube, and sublimes

1 Viscount Pollington, present Earl of Mexborough, in answer to a letter from Teflis.

His flight into a vision, scenes and times
Of travel-quickened thought to ours you bring;
Leading us by the Terek's Lesghian spring;
I, nothing in return can give, but rhymes.
But yet in these, o'erpassing time and tide,
Your name to Casbeck's spirit I commend ;
To write it as a stream on his gaunt side,
Whose joyous southern windings may descend
To Teflis, or that sea by which abide,
Rivalling his, the shades of Demavend.

TO A PINE PLANTED AT BETTISFIELD,

SUBJECT OF ANOTHER SONNET.

INE, whose

PINE,

green

branches to my vernal

song

Were as the coronal, gracing its close; Now, forth his painted portals, Autumn goes Over the woods, that will be bare ere long. He leads them, reeling like a Thracian throng; And each in turn his leafy chaplet throws Down at his feet; only the Ilex knows A spell superior to the enchanter strong. He hath a hollow root, in which the mice Dream out the winter, or some woodland bee; Yet bravely doth his dusk head front the stars; Through whose dread gates hath pass'd a century twice, Since he was planted; flourish thus my tree,

And see a prosperous end of civil jars.1

1 Many political troubles were about at the time when this was

written.