And our hosts undaunted stood-
Beating back the raging flood, [sea,
That came pouring from the valley like a
Casting havoc on the shore,
With a dull and sullen roar,—
The thunder-cloud above it, and the light-
ning flashing free.

On darkness grew the daylight,
'Mid the loud, incessant peal;
On the daylight followed noontide,
As they struggled steel to steel!
O ye gallant souls and true!
O ye great immortal few!

On your banner bright unfurled
Shone the freedom of the world;

In your keeping lay the safety of the lands;
Lay the splendour of our name;
Lay our glory and our fame;

And ye held and raised them all in your dauntless hearts and hands!

But when the warrior dieth,

His comrades in the war,

With arms reversed and muffled drums, Follow his funeral car:

They show the banners taken,

They tell his battles won,

And after him lead his masterless steed, While peals the minute-gun.

Amid the noblest of the land

We lay the sage to rest,

And give the bard an honoured place,
With costly marble drest,
In the great minster transept
Where lights like glories fall,

And the organ rings, and the sweet choir sings

Along the emblazoned wall.

This was the truest warrior
That ever buckled sword;

This the most gifted poet

That ever breathed a word; And never earth's philosopher

Traced with his golden pen,

On the deathless page, truths half so sage As he wrote down for men.

And had he not high honour,—
The hill-side for a pall,
To lie in state while angels wait,
With stars for tapers tall,

And the dark rock-pines,like tossing plumes,
Over his bier to wave,

And God's own hand in that lonely land To lay him in the grave?

In that strange grave without a name,
Whence his uncoffined clay
Shall break again, oh, wondrous thought!
Before the Judgment Day,

And stand with glory wrapt around

On the hills he never trod, And speak of the strife that won our life With the Incarnate Son of God.

O lonely grave in Moab's land!
O dark Beth-Peor's hill!

Speak to these curious hearts of ours,
And teach them to be still.
God hath His mysteries of grace,
Ways that we cannot tell;

He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep
Of him He loved so well.

:0:

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

ISEULT OF BRITTANY, AFTER TRISTAN'S DEATH.

AND is she happy? Does she see unmoved

The days in which she might have lived and loved

Slip, without bringing bliss, slowly away, One after one, to-morrow like to-day? Joy has not found her yet, nor ever will: Is it this thought that makes her mien so still,

Her features so fatigued, her eyes, though

sweet, So sunk,- -so rarely lifted save to meet Her children's? She moves slow; her voice alone

Has yet an infantine and silver tone,But even that comes languidly; in truth, She seems one dying in a mask of youth. And now she will go home, and softly lay Her laughing children in their beds, and play

Awhile with them before they sleep; and then

She'll light her silver lamp, which fisher

men,

Dragging their nets through the rough waves afar

Along this iron coast, know like a star, And take her broidery-frame, and there she 'll sit

Hour after hour, her gold curls sweeping it,
Lifting her soft-bent head only to mind
Her children, or to listen to the wind.
And when the clock peals midnight, she
will move

Her work away, and let her fingers rove Across the shaggy brows of Tristan's hound,

Who lies, guarding her feet, along the ground;

Or else she will fall musing, her blue eyes Fixed, her slight hands clasped on her lap; then rise,

And at her prie-dieu kneel, until she have

told

Her rosary beads of ebony tipped with gold, Then to her soft sleep; and to-morrow 'll be To-day's exact repeated effigy.

Yes, it is lonely for her in her hall; The children, and the gray haired seneschal, Her women, and Sir Tristan's aged hound Are there the sole companions to be found.

But these she loves; and noisier life than this

She would find ill to bear, weak as she is. She has her children too, and night and day Is with them; and the wide heaths where they play,

The hollies, and the cliff, and the sea-shore, The sand, the sea-birds, and the distant sails, These are to her dear as to them; the tales With which this day the children she beguiled

She gleaned from Breton grandames when a child

In every hut along this sea-coast wild.

She herself loves them, and, when they are told,

Can forget all to hear them, as of old.

Dear saints! it is not sorrow, as I hear, Not suffering, that shuts up eye and ear To all which has delighted them before, And lets us be what we were once no more.

No; we may suffer deeply, yet retain Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain,

By what of old pleased us, and will again. No 'tis the gradual furnace of the world, In whose hot air our spirits are upcurled Until they crumble, or else grow like steelWhich kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring

Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel, But takes away the power-this can avail, By drying up our joy in everything,

To make our former pleasures all seem stale.

This, or some tyrannous single thought, some fit

Of passion, which subdues our souls to it, Till for its sake alone we live and moveCall it ambition, or remorse, or loveThis too can change us wholly, and make

seem

All that we did before shadow and dream.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

REST.

IS NOT short pain well borne that brings long ease?

And lays the soul to sleep in quiet grave? Sleep after toil,-port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.

OUR WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH.

IF any strength we have, it is to ill, But all the good is God's, both power and eke the will.

IN vain he seeks that, having, cannot hold. AN AGED MAN.

THERE they do find that godly agèd sire, With snowy locks adown his shoulders shed;

As hoary frost with spangles doth attire The mossy branches of an oak half dead.