Then towards the lackeys turning, quick my Lord the Keeper nodded,

Straight the King's great chair was brought him, by two footmen able-bodied;

Languidly he sank into it: it was comfortably wadded.

"Leading on my fierce companions," cried he, "over storm and brine,

I have fought and I have conquered! Where was glory like to mine?"

Loudly all the courtiers echoed: "Where is glory like to thine?"

"What avail me all my kingdoms? Weary am I now and old; Those fair sons I have begotten, long to see me dead and cold; Would I were, and quiet buried, underneath the silent mould!

"Oh, remorse, the writhing serpent! at my bosom tears and bites;

Horrid, horrid things I look on, though I put out all the lights;

Ghosts of ghastly recollections troop about my bed at nights. "Cities burning, convents blazing, red with sacrilegious fires; Mothers weeping, virgins screaming vainly for their slaughtered sires."

"Such a tender conscience," cries the Bishop, "every one admires.

"But for such unpleasant bygones, cease, my gracious lord, to search,

They're forgotten and forgiven by our Holy Mother Church; Never, never does she leave her benefactors in the lurch.

"Look! the land is crowned with minsters, which your Grace's bounty raised;

Abbeys filled with holy men, where you and Heaven are daily praised:

You, my lord, to think of dying? on my conscience I'm amazed!"

"Nay, I feel," replied King Canute, "that my end is drawing near."

"Don't say so," exclaimed the courtiers (striving each to squeeze a tear).

"Sure your Grace is strong and lusty, and may live this fifty year."

"Live these fifty years!" the Bishop roared, with actions made to suit.

"Are you mad, my good Lord Keeper, thus to speak of King

Canute!

Men have lived a thousand years, and sure his Majesty

"Adam, Enoch, Lamech, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Methuselah, Lived nine hundred years apiece, and mayn't the King as well as they?"

66

Fervently," exclaimed the Keeper, " fervently I trust he may."

"He to die?"resumed the Bishop. "He a mortal like to us? Death was not for him intended, though communis omnibus: Keeper, you are irreligious, for to talk and cavil thus.

"With his wondrous skill in healing ne'er a doctor can compete,

Loathsome lepers, if he touch them, start up clean upon their feet;

Surely he could raise the dead up, did his Highness think it

meet.

"Did not once the Jewish captain stay the sun upon the hill, And, the while he slew the foemen, bid the silver moon stand still?

So, no doubt, could gracious Canute, if it were his sacred will." "Might I stay the sun above us, good Sir Bishop?" Canute cried;

"Could I bid the silver moon to pause upon her heavenly ride?

If the moon obeys my orders, sure I can command the tide.

"Will the advancing waves obey me, Bishop, if I make the

sign?"

Said the Bishop, bowing lowly, "Land and sea, my lord, are thine."

Canute turned towards the ocean--" Back!" he said, "thou foaming brine.

"From the sacred shore I stand on, I command thee to retreat;

Venture not, thou stormy rebel, to approach thy master's seat:

Ocean, be thou still! I bid thee come not nearer to my feet!" But the sullen ocean answered with a louder, deeper roar, And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling sounding on the shore;

Back the Keeper and the Bishop, back the King and courtiers bore.

And he sternly bade them never more to kneel to human clay,

But alone to praise and worship That which earth and seas

obey:

And his golden crown of empire never wore he from that day.

....

King Canute is dead and gone: parasites exist alway.

THE BABY IS DEAD.-EMMA ALICE BROWNE.

There is a white hatchment over the portal-a long streamer of snowy crape trails from the muffled bell-knob, like a film of ghostly morning mist. We know that an impalpable footstep has fallen on this threshold; that a shadowy hand has knocked at this shrouded door; that the dread visitant, who will not be denied nor turned away, has entered here. He has entered, and departed; but the veiled mourner, Sorrow, who treads solemnly after him, has stayed behind.

His ruthless hand has plucked the white bud of promise that gladdened the fair garland of household love-the bud that breathed the yet infolded perfume of sweet but undefined hopes, that coming years would ripen to fruition. His remorseless foot has fallen beside this hearthstone-and lo! the dread footprint has hollowed a little grave! The baby is dead.

The tiny image, white as sculptured Parian, lies yonder in its snowy casket, draped in spotless fabrics, and wreathed with funeral flowers. The mother bends with anguished eyes above the still, small effigy of her lost hope; but the baby is not there. Out of her arms, and out of her life, something has gone that will not return. The sealed lids will not uplift from happy sleep; the wondering eyes will search her face no more. The little restless hands lie still and pulseless, frozen into eternal quiet; their silken touches, vague and aimless as the kisses of the south wind, will steal into her bosom and soothe her weariness and lure her grief no more! She realizes this, with all the live, pulsating agony of newly-bereaved motherhood, as she leans above the dainty coffin, and slow, scalding tears, wrung from the very fibres of her bruised life, drop one by one on the unconscious face.

She folds a sprig of hyssop and a half-blown rosebud in the waxen hand, and sends them to the Father as a message and a token-the symbols of her grief and baby's innocence: "Lo! I surrender back to Thee the soul that Thou didst lend me; unsullied, as from Thy hands, I yield it up,

in faith and hope; but oh! I give the child with bitter tears— with breaking heart-with passionate, human woe unutterable!"

And the days lengthen, the nights fall, the years go on. She keeps the key of the baby's casket in her bosom-the memory of the rosebud face within her heart-and life, for her, is never again quite what it was ere baby died.

THE BACHELOR SALE.

I dreamed a dream in the midst of my slumbers,
And as fast as I dreamed it was coined into numbers;
My thoughts ran along in such beautiful metre,
I'm sure I ne'er saw any poetry sweeter.

It seemed that a law had been recently made,
That a tax on old bachelors' pates should be laid;
And, in order to make them all willing to marry,
The tax was as large as a man could well carry.

The bachelors grumbled, and said 'twas no use,
'Twas cruel injustice and horrid abuse-

And declared that to save their own hearts' blood from spilling,

Of such a vile tax they would ne'er pay a shilling.

But the rulers determined their scheme to pursue,

So they set all the bachelors up at vendue.

A crier was sent through the town to and fro,
To rattle his bell and his trumpet to blow,
And to bawl out to all he might meet on his way,
"Ho! forty old bachelors sold here to-day."

And presently all the old maids of the town,—
Each one in her very best bonnet and gown,—
From thirty to sixty, fair, plain, red, and pale,
Of every description all flocked to the sale.

The auctioneer, then, in his labor began;
And called out aloud, as he held up a man,
"How much for a bachelor? Who wants to buy?"
In a twink, every maiden responded, “I—I!"

In short, at a hugely extravagant price,
The bachelors all were sold off in a trice,

And forty old maidens-some younger, some older--
Each lugged an old bachelor home on her shoulder.

GOD'S BEVERAGE.-JAS. S. WATKINS.

Not in the haunts of the wicked,
Not in the dens of the craven,
Not in the hot-house of Satan
Is God's best beverage given;
Not in the vale of corruption-
Not in the poisonous gases
Out from the simmering still, to
Laugh in the wine-bibber's glasses.
Not in the brewery, seething-
Not in its sickening fumes,
Brewed for the craven death-angel
Keeping the gates of the tombs;
Not in the stifling odors

Out from the stench of the mill
Where Satan is superintendent,
Grinding destruction at will.
But down in the beautiful valley,
The vale that we cherish so well,
Where the red deer playfully wanders
With its mate in the shadowy dell;
Way down in the rock-bound ravine,
Where pebbles are carelessly strewed,
Where fountains are all the day singing,
Is Heaven's best beverage brewed.
High up on the crest of the mountains,
Where granite rocks glitter like gold,
Where the storm-clouds gather relentless,
And the crash of the thunder is told;
And out on the turbulent waters,

Where the hurricane howls o'er the sea,
Is brewed there the best of all beverage-
The best for you, reader, and me.

"Tis brewed in the cataract sporting, As it leaps from its perilous height; 'Tis seen in the gauze around Luna,

As she lights up the heavens at night; 'Tis seen in the glittering ice-gem,

When its brilliance, like jewels, doth seem, And, too, in the hail-shower dancing;

Cloud-hid from the morning sun's beam. "Tis seen in the rain-drops descending,

As they weave the bright bow in the air, Whose woof is the sunbeams of Heaven, Each painting their bright colors there;