The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws! himself sought out no food.
But, with a piteous and perpetual moan

And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress-he died!
The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place,

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage; they raked up,

And, shivering, scraped, with their cold skeleton hands, The feeble ashes; and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspect-saw, and shrieked,—and died!--
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,-

Unknowing who he was, upon whose brow
Famine had written fiend!

The world was void-
The populous and the powerful were a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean, all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths:

Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropped,
They slept on the abyss without a surge:

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,—
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perished: Darkness had no necċ
Of aid from them-She was the universe.

26.-A GIRL READING.-Alexander Bell.

See Beauty, fairer still by filial love, the minister of ease to waning life! The aged sire, his sense of vision lost, in darkness sits, his grandchild by his side. His eyes no more can view corrupted earth, which has for him one only blessing left. She, self-devoted, knows no other care than thisthe comfort of the aged sire. She reads the Word of God. O sweet and low the tuneful softness of her mellow voice! "Tis God's own instrument reveals His will. O richer far are its harmonious notes, than stringèd harp, or dulcet lute, or reed, or aught of art musician's skill can frame; more captivating to the charmèd ear than were the fabled strains of Orpheus' lyre! Her attitude—her air—is simple grace. Upon her lips, and in her features, beams intelligence, with modesty combin'd. Her respiration, undulating, flows in sounds salubrious. Each lineament is placid on the mind-illumin'd face. While thus engag'd, the pious maiden seems, in figure and in deed, of those bright forms that sometimes deign'd to visit holy men, and cheer them in their heavy pilgrimage.

27.-ENID AND GERAINT.-Tennyson.

Then rode Geraint into the castle court,
His charger trampling many a prickly star
Of sprouted thistle, on the broken stones.
He looked, and saw that all was ruinous :

Here, stood a shattered archway, plumed with fern;
And here, had fallen a great part of a tower,
Whole; like a crag that tumbles from the cliff;
And, like a crag, was gay with wilding flowers:
And high above, a piece of turret stair-
Worn by the feet that now were silent-wound,
Bare to the sun; and monstrous ivy-stems
Clasped the gray walls, with hairy-fibred arms,
And sucked the joining of the stones, and looked
A knot-beneath, of snakes; aloft, a grove.

And, while he waited in the castle-court,
The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang
Clear through the open casement of the hall,
Singing; and,-as the sweet voice of a bird,
Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,
Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form,—

So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;
And made him like a man abroad at morn,
When first the liquid note, belov❜d of men,
Comes flying over many a windy wave,
To Britain; and in April, suddenly,

Breaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red;
And he suspends his converse with a friend,
Or, it may be, the labour of his hands,

To think, or say, "There is the nightingale !"...
So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,
Here, by Heaven's grace, is the one voice for me!"

66

It chanced the song that Enid sung, was one Of Fortune and her Wheel; and Enid sang

“Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud; Turn thy wild wheel, through sunshine, storm and cloud; Thy wheel and thee, we neither love nor hate. "Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown; With that wild wheel, we go not up or down; Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great. "Smile, and we smile, the lords of many lands; Frown, and we smile, the lords of our own hands; For man is man, and master of his fate.

"Turn, turn, thy wheel, above the starving crowd: Thy wheel and thou, are shadows in the cloud;

Thy wheel and thee, we neither love nor hate."
"Hark! by the bird's song, you may know the nest,"
Said Yniol; "enter quickly." Entering then-
Right o'er a mount of newly-fallen stones-

The dusky-raftered, many cobwebb'd hall,
He found an ancient Dame, in dim brocade;
And near her, like a blossom vermeil-white,
That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath,
Moved the fair Enid, all in faded silk-

Her daughter. In a moment thought Geraint,
"Here, with Heaven's will, is the one maid for me!”

275

SELECTIONS FROM DRAMATIC POETRY

FOR

ADVANCED STUDENTS.

1.-HELENA'S REPROACH TO HERMIA.-Shakespeare.

',

Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid! have you conspired, have you with these contrived, to bait me with this foul derision? Is all the counsel that we two have shared, the sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent, when we have chid the hasty-footed time for parting us- -O, is it all forgot? All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence? We, Hermia, like two artificer gods, created with our needles both one flower, both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, both warbling of one song, both in one key; as if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds had been incorporate. So we grew together, like to a double cherry; seeming parted, but yet a union in partition ;-two lovely berries moulded on one stem: so, with two seeming bodies, but one heart. And will you rend our ancient love asunder, to join with men in scorning your poor friend? It is not friendly! 'tis not maidenly! Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for itthough I alone do feel the injury!

2.-A WIFE'S DUTY.-Shakespeare.

Thy husband is thy life, thy lord, thy keeper, thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, and for thy maintenance; commits his body to painful labour, both by sea and land; to watch the night in storm, the day in cold,-while thou liest warm at home, secure and safe; and craves no other tribute at thy hands, but love, fair looks, and true obedience,—too little payment for so great a debt! Such duty as the subject owes the prince, even such a woman oweth to her husband: and when she's froward, peevish, sullen, sour, and not obedient to his honest will, what is she but a foul contending rebel, and graceless traitor to her loving lord? I am ashamed that women are so simple, to offer war where they should kneel for peace; or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,—when they are bound to serve, love, and obey.

3.-JULIET TAKING THE OPIATE.-Shakespeare.

Farewell!-Heaven knows when we shall meet again. I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, that almost freezes up the heat of life : I'll call them back again to comfort me ;-Nurse!-What should she do here? My dismal scene I needs must act alone.-Come, phial.—What if this mixture do not work at all? Must I, of force, be married to the Count? No, no; —this dagger shall forbid it!... What if it be a poison, which the friar subtly hath ministered to have me dead; lest in this marriage he should be dishonoured, because he married me before to Romeo? I fear, it is: and yet, methinks, it should not, for he hath still been tried a holy man :-I will not entertain so bad a thought!... How if, when I am laid into the tomb, I wake before the time that Romeo come to redeem me? there's a fearful point! Shall I not then be stifled in the vault, to whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, and there die strangled ere my Romeo come? Or, if I live, is it not very like, the horrible conceit of death and night, together with the terror of the place,— as in a vault, an ancient receptacle, where, for these many hundred years, the bones of all my buried ancestors are packed; where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say, at some hours in the night spirits resort;—alack, alack! it is not like, that I, so early waking,—what with loathsome smells; and shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth, that living mortals, hearing them, run'mad; oh! if I wake, shall I not be distraught, environèd with all these hideous fears? and madly play with my forefathers' joints? and pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud? and, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone, as with a club, dash out my desperate brains? Oh, look! methinks, I see my cousin's ghost seeking out Romeo !-Stay, Tybalt, stay!-Romeo, I come! -This do I drink to thee.

4.-THE LADY'S SOLILOQUY IN COMUS.-Milton.

This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,-my best guide now: methought it was the sound of riot and ill-managed merriment, such as the jocund flute, or gamesome pipe, stirs up among the loose unletter'd hinds; when, for their teeming flocks and granges full, in wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan, and thank the gods amiss. I should be loth to meet the rudeness and swill'd insolence of such late wassailers; yet, O! where else shall I inform my unacquainted feet in the blind mazes of this tangled wood? My brothers-when they saw me wearied out with this long way, resolving here to lodge under the spreading favour of these pines-stept, as they said, to the next thicket-side, to bring me berries,