MISERERE.

Seeking some respite from her keen despair,
Striving to hide her shame within its grave;
Was there no latent hope to win one sigh
From him who caused her young life's misery?

217

Stung by the rumour of her mournful fate,
With feelings of remorse and selfish fear,
A stranger seeks the village-but too late:
The pleading cry no more will vex his 'ear,
The frail form, rescued from the wave's embrace,
Slowly he follows to its resting place.

And oft that face shall haunt his future days,
The streaming hair, the rigid agony,
The haunting eyes, where once he loved to gaze
In brightest moments cross his memory:
In his warm home, when winter tempests rave,
Sadly his thoughts will seek that lonely grave.

Ah! "miserere!" who may cast the stone?

Her guilt was great-her struggles who can tell? Judge her not yet-have ye temptation known?

Have ye ne'er faltered 'neath the tempter's spell? Leave her until they both once more may weep— Destroyer and destroyed-before the Judgment

seat.

Maria Chambers.

Ay, 'tis a comely sight to behold,
As the company march
Through the rounded arch

Of that Cathedral old!—

Singers behind 'em and singers before 'em,
All of them ranging in due decorum,
Around the inside of the Sanctum Sanctorum,
While brilliant and bright

An unwonted light

(I forgot to premise this was all done at night).
The links and the torches and flambeaux shed
On the sculptured forms of the Mighty Dead,
That rest below, mostly buried in lead,
And above recumbent in grim repose,

A LEGEND OF BLOIS.

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With their mailed hose,

And their dogs at their toes,

And little boys kneeling beneath them in rows, Their hands joined in prayer, all in very long clothes,

With inscriptions in brass, begging each who survives,

As they some of them seem to have led so-so lives, To Praie for the Sowles of themselves and their

wives.

The effect of the music too really was fine

When they let the good prelate down into his shrine,

And by old and young

The " Requiem" was sung:

Not vernacular French, but a classical tongue, That is Latin-I don't think they meddled with Greek

In short, the whole thing produced-so to speakWhat in Blois they would call a Coup d'œil magnifique !

Yet surely when the level ray

Of some mild eve's descending sun
Lights on the village pastor, grey

In years ere ours had well begun—

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A LEGEND OF BLOIS.

As there in simplest vestment clad,
He speaks, beneath the churchyard tree,
In solemn tones,-but yet not sad,—

Of what Man is-what Man shall be !

And clustering round the grave, half hid
By that same quiet churchyard yew,
The rustic mourners bend to bid

The dust they loved a last adieu—

-That ray, methinks, that rests so sheen
Upon each briar-bound hillock green,
So calm, so tranquil, so serene,
Gives to the eye a fairer scene,-
Speaks to the heart with holier breath
Than all this pageantry of Death.

Thomas Ingoldsby.

London: SWIFT & Co., King Street, Regent Street.