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"Let the men of lore appear,

The wisest of the earth,
And expound the words of fear,
Which mar our royal mirth."

Chaldæa's seers are good,

But here they have no skill;
And the unknown letters stood,
Untold and awful still.
And Babel's men of age

Are wise and deep in lore;
But now they were not sage,
They saw, but knew no more.

A captive in the land,

A stranger and a youth, —
He heard the king's command,

He saw that writing's truth.
The lamps around were bright,
The prophecy in view:
He read it on that night,

The morrow proved it true.

"Belshazzar's grave is made, His kingdom passed away, He in the balance weighed,

Is light and worthless clay. The shroud, his robe of state; His canopy, the stone; The Mede is at his gate!

The Persian on his throne!"

BYRON.

SIR PAVON AND ST. PAVON.

PART I.

ST. MARK'S hushed abbey heard, Through prayers, a roar and din; A brawling voice did shout,

"Knave shaveling, let me in!"

The caged porter peeped,

All fluttering, through the grate, Like birds that hear a mew.

A knight was at the gate.

His left hand reined his steed,

Still smoking from the ford; His crimson right, that dangled, clutched

Half of his broken sword.

His broken plume flapped low;
His charger's mane with mud

Was clogged; he wavered in his seat;
His mail dropped drops of blood.

"Who cometh in such haste?" "Sir Pavon, late, I hight,

Of all the land around

The stanchest, mightiest knight.

"My foes-they dared not faceBeset me at my back

In ambush. Fast and hard
They follow on my track.

"Now wilt thou let me in,

Or shall I burst the door ?" The grating bolts ground back; the knight

Lay swooning in his gore.

As children, half afraid,
Draw hear a crushed wasp,
Look, touch, and twitch away
Their hands, then lightly grasp,

Him to their spital soon

The summoned brethren bore, And searched his wounds. He woke, And roundly cursed and swore.

The younger friar stopped his ears; The elder chid. He flung

His gummy plasters at his mouth, And bade him hold his tongue.

But, faint and weak, when, left
Upon his couch alone,

He viewed the valley, framed within

His window's carven stone,

He learned anew to weep,
All as he lay along,

To see the smoke-wreaths from his

towers

Climb up the clouds among.

The abbot came to bring

A balsam to his guest, On soft feet tutored long

To break no sufferer's rest,

And heard his sobbing heart

Drink deep in draughts of woe; Then "Benedicite, my son,"

He breathed, in murmurs low.

Right sharply turned the knight
Upon the unwelcome spy;

But changed his shaggy face, as

when,

Down through a stormy sky,

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"(I was a new-breeched boy,
And sat upon her knee,
Less mindful of the story than
Of cates she gave to me.)

"But then I thought a flood

Came down to drown them all, And that they only now in stone Stood on the minster wall,

"Or painted in the glass

Upon the window high, Where, swelled with spring-tides, breaks the sea

Beneath, and leaves them dry,

"Quite out of danger's way,

And breathed and walked no more Upon the muddy earth, to do The deeds they did of yore,

"When still the sick were healed

Where e'en their shadows fell; But here is one that's living yet, And he shall make me well."

The patient priest benign

His watch beside him kept, Until he dropped his burning lids, And like an infant slept.

PART II.

Some weary weeks were spent
In tossing and in pain,

Before the knight's huge frame was braced

With strength and steel again.
(He had his armor brought
The day he left his bed,
And fitted on by novice hands,

To prop him up," he said.)
Soon jangling then he stamped,
Amazed with all he saw,
Through cell and through refectory,
With little grace or awe.

Unbidden at the board

He sat, a mouthful took,

And shot it spattering through his beard,

Sprang up, and cursed the cook.

If some bowed friar passèd by,

He chucked him 'neath the chin, And cried, "What cheer?" or, "Dost thou find

That hair-cloth pricks the skin?"

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Through shadowy aisle, 'neath vaulted roof,

His faltering steps were led; Beside him was the living saint, Beneath, the sainted dead.

Bespread with nun-wrought tapestry,
The holy altar stood;

Above it, carved by martyr hands,
Arose the Holy Rood;

Burned round it, tipped with tongues of flame,

Vowed candles white and tall; And frosted cup and patine, clear, In silver, painted all.

The prisoned giant Music in

The rumbling organ rolled, And roared sweet thunders up to heaven,

Through all its pipes of gold.

He started. 'Mid the prostrate throng
Upright, he heard the hymn
With fallen chin and lifted eye
That searched the arches dim;

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"Henry de Joyense, Comte du Bouchage, Frère puine du Duc de Joyeuse, tué à Contras. Un jour qu'il passoit à Paris à quatre heures du matin, près du Couvent des Capucins, après avoir passé la nuit en débauche, il s'imagina que les Anges chantoient Matines dans Couvent. Frappé de cette idée, il se fit Capucin, sous le noin de Frère-Ange.'. . . Cette anecdote est tirée des Notes sur l'Henriade." - Mémoires de Sully, Livre Dixieme, Note 67.

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"My knee is stiff with steel,

And will not bend it well. "My sins! A peerless knight like me, What should he have to tell?

"I never turned in fight

Till treason wrought my harm, Nor then, before my shattered sword Weighed down my shattered arın.

"I never broke mine oath,

Forgot my friend or foe, Nor left a benefit unpaid

With weal, or wrong with woe.

"Keep thee from me!' * I said,
Still, ere my blows began,
Nor gashed mine unarmed enemy, t
Nor smote a felled man,

"Observing every rule
Of generous chivalry;

And maid and matron ever found
A champion leal in me.

"What gallantly I won

In war, I did not hoard, But spent as gallantly in peace, With neighbors round my board."

"Thy neighbors, son? The serfs

For miles who tilled thy ground?" "Tush, father, nay! The high-born knights

For many a league around.

"They were my brethren sworn, In battle and in sport. 'Twere wondrous shame, should one like me

With beggar kernes consort!

"Clean have I made my shrift,"
He said; and so he ceased,
And bore a blithe and guileless cheer,
That sore perplexed the priest.

With words both soft and keen,
He searched his breast within.
Still said he, "So I sinnèd not,”
Or, "That is, sure, no sin."

*The regular form of announcement that a single combat had begun between knights.

"To smyte a wounded man that may not stonde, God deffende me from such a shame." "Wyt thon well, Syr Gawayn, I wyl neuer smyte a fellyd knight."- Prose Romance of King Arthur.

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