THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.

107

Waved like a blood-flag on the sky,

All flaring and uneven;

And soon a score of fires, I ween,

From height, and hill, and cliff were seen;
Each with warlike tidings fraught;

Each from each the signal caught;

Each after each they glanced to sight,

As stars arise upon the night.

They gleam'd on many a dusky tarn
Haunted by the lonely earn :

On many a cairn's grey pyramid,
Where urns of mighty chiefs lie hid.

The livelong night in Branksome rang
The ceaseless sound of steel;
The castle-bell with backward clang,
Sent forth the 'larum peal;
Was frequent heard the heavy jar,
Where massive stone and iron bar
Were piled on echoing keep and tower
To whelm the foe with deadly shower;
Was frequent heard the changing guard,
And watch-word from the sleepless ward;
While wearied by the endless din,
Blood-hound and ban-dog yelled within.

Sir Walter Scott.

Now came fulfilment of the year's desire,
The tall wheat, coloured by the August fire
Grew heavy-headed, dreading its decay,
And blacker grew the elm-trees day by day.
About the edges of the yellow corn,

And o'er the gardens grown somewhat outworn
The bees went hurrying to fill up their store;
The apple-boughs bent over more and more;
With peach and apricot the garden wall,
Was odorous, and the pears began to fall
From off the high tree with each freshening

breeze.

TIME.

A little raised above the waving gold

109

The Wanderers heard this marvellous story told, While 'twixt the gleaming flasks of ancient wine, They watched the reapers' slow advancing line. William Morris.

TIME.

UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality!

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?

Shelley.

What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.

MAUD.

That made it stir on the shore.

Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push when he was uncurled,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro' his dim water-world?

Slight, to be crushed with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,
Small, but a work divine,
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three-decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock,

Here on the Breton strand.

III