"And let me think that it may beguile Dreary days which the dead must spend Down in their darkness under the aisle,

"To say,- What matters at the end?
I did no more while my heart was warm,
Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.'

"Where is the use of the lip's red charm, The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow, And the blood that blues the inside arm—

"Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,
The earthly gift to an end divine?
A lady of clay is as good, I trow."

But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine
With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace,
Was set where now is the empty shrine—

(With, leaning out of a bright blue space, As a ghost might, from a chink of sky, The passionate pale lady's face

Eying ever with earnest eye,

And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch, Some one who ever passes by)—

The Duke sighed like the simplest wretch

In Florence: "So, my dream escapes!
Will its record stay?" And he bade them fetch

Some subtle fashioner of shapes

"Can the soul, the will, die out of a man Ere his body find the grave that gapes?

"John of Douay shall work my plan, Mould me on horseback here aloft, Alive (the subtle artisan!)

"In the very square I cross so oft!

That men may admire, when future suns

Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft

"While the mouth and the brow are brave in bronze

Admire and say, 'When he was alive,
How he would take his pleasure once!'

"And it shall go hard but I contrive
To listen meanwhile, and laugh in my tomb
At indolence which aspires to strive."

So! while these wait the trump of doom,
How do their spirits pass, I wonder,
Nights and days in the narrow room?
Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder
What a gift life was, ages ago,
Six steps out of the chapel yonder.

Surely they see not God, I know,
Nor all that chivalry of His,
The soldier-saints who, row on row,

Burn upward each to his point of bliss—
Since, the end of life being manifest,
He had cut his way through the world to this

I hear your reproach—" But delay was best,
For their end was a crime !"—Oh, a crime will de
As well, I reply, to serve for a test,

As a virtue golden through and through,

Sufficient to vindicate itself

And prove its worth at a moment's view.

Must a game be played for the sake of pelf?
Where a button goes, 'twere an epigram
To offer the stamp of the very Guelph.

The true has no value beyond the sham.
As well the counter as coin, I submit,
When your table's a hat, and your prize a dram.

Stake your counter as boldly every whit;
Venture as truly, use the same skill;
Do your best, whether winning or losing it,

If you choose to play-is my principle!
Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

The counter our lovers staked was lost
As surely as if it were lawful coin;
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

Was the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a crime, I say.
You of the virtue (we issue join),
How strive you? De te, fabula!

Alfred Tennyson.

LOCKS LEY HALL.

COMR

OMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn—

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.

"Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,

Dreary gleams about the moorland, flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy

tracts,

And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to

rest,

Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,

Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime

With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time ;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed; When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed;

When I dipped into the future far as human eye could

see

Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;

In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier Iris changes on the burnished dove; In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,

And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth

to me;

Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee." On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light,

As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turned-her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs

All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes

Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;"

Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, "I have loved thee long."