Thus song could prevail

O'er death and o'er hell,

A conquest how hard and how glorious!
Though fate had fast bound her

With Styx nine times round her,
Yet music and love were victorious.

But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes:
Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!
How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move?
No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love.
Now under hanging mountains,

Beside the falls of fountains,

Or where Hebrus wanders,

Rolling in meanders,
All alone,

Unheard, unknown,
He makes his moan;
And calls her ghost,
For ever, ever, ever lost!
Now with furies surrounded,
Despairing, confounded,

He trembles, he glows,

Amidst Rhodope's snows:

See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies;

Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries

Ah see, he dies!

Yet e'en in death Eurydice he sung;

Eurydice still trembled on his tongue :

Eurydice the woods,

Eurydice the floods,

Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung.

Music the fiercest grief can charm,

And Fate's severest rage disarm ;
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please;

G

Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.

This the divine Cecilia found,

And to her Maker's praise confined the sound.
When the full organ joins the tuneful quire,
The immortal powers incline their ear :
Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire,
While solemn airs improve the sacred fire;
And angels lean from heaven to hear.
Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell;
To bright Cecilia greater power is given;
His numbers raised a shade from hell,
Hers lift the soul to heaven.

LOVE

AMONG THE

ROBERT

RUINS.

BROWNING.

WHERE the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles
Miles and miles

On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep

Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop

Was the site once of a city great and gay,

(So they say)

Of our country's very capital, its prince

Ages since

Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far Peace or war.

Now, the country does not even boast a tree,

As you see,

To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
From the hills

Intersect and give a name to (else they run
Into one)

Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
Up like fires

O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall

Bounding all,

Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed, Twelve abreast.

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
Never was!

Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads
And embeds

Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
Stock or stone-

Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;

Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;

And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
Bought and sold.

Now, the single little turret that remains
On the plains,

By the caper over-rooted, by the gourd
Overscored,

While the patching house-leek's head of blossom winks
Through the chinks-

Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime,

And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced

As they raced,

And the monarch and his minions and his dames
Viewed the games.

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve

Smiles to leave

To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
In such peace,

And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
Melt away-

That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair

Waits me there

In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal;

When the king looked, where she looks now, breath

Till I come.

But he looked upon the city, every side,

Far and wide

[less, dumb,

All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades
Colonnades,

All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then,
All the men!

When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand

On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace

Of my face,

Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and north,

And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky,

Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force

Gold, of course.

Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth's returns

For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!

Shut them in,

With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! Love is best.

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

Ir was a summer evening,

Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage door
Was sitting in the sun;
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin

Roll something large and round, Which he beside the rivulet,

In playing there, had found: He came to ask what he had found, That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,

Who stood expectant by;

And then the old man shook his head,
And, with a natural sigh,

""Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
"Who fell in the great victory!

"I find them in the garden,

For there's many here about; And often when I go to plough,

The ploughshare turns them out, For many thousand men," said he, "Were slain in that great victory!"

"Now, tell us what 'twas all about,"
Young Peterkin he cries;

And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;